System for planning the introduction of a needle in a patient's body

Abstract

The invention relates to a system for planning introduction of a needle in a patient's body, comprising: a needle guide configured to be coupled to a needle; a localization system configured for tracking the needle guide with respect to the patient's body, the localization system being coupled to a needle tracker attached to the needle guide and a reference marker adapted to be attached to the patient's body to determine a spatial position and orientation of the needle tracker relative to the reference marker; a processor configured for determining a virtual position and orientation of the needle with respect to the 3D image using localization data of the needle guide, thereby defining a virtual needle having said virtual position and orientation, detecting a part of the needle that has already been inserted into the patient's body as a trace in the 3D medical image, computing a distance between the virtual needle and the detected needle, and determining a representation of the computed distance; a display coupled to the processor for displaying a representation of the virtual needle and the representation of the computed distance between the virtual needle and the detected part of the needle.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.