System and method for augmentation of endoscopic surgery

A method of determining positional information about an anatomical feature within a patient's body, comprising the steps of:

• inserting a first surgical instrument into the patient's body, the instrument having a means for transmitting an image out of the patient's body;
• transmitting an image of the designated anatomical feature out of the patient's body using the first surgical instrument;
• displaying the transmitted image;
• designating an anatomical feature of interest by manipulating a computer generated graphics object displayed and superimposed on the display image transmitted by the first surgical instrument;
• and
• determining positional information about the designated anatomical feature of interest by using image processing.

A method of determining positional information about an anatomical feature within a patient's body, comprising the steps of:

• inserting a first surgical instrument into the patient's body, the instrument having a means for transmitting an image out of the patient's body;
• transmitting an image of the designated anatomical feature out of the patient's body using the first surgical instrument;
• designating an anatomical feature of interest by using either one of the following steps (1) and (2):
• (1) pointing with a second surgical instrument having a visual target and
• (2) manipulating a computer generated graphics object displayed and superimposed on the image transmitted by the first surgical instrument;
• and further comprising the steps of:
• determining positional information about the designated anatomical feature of interest by using image processing;
• and
• providing the positional, information to a surgeon.

A method of determining positional information about an anatomical feature comprising:

• inserting a first and a second surgical instrument into the patient's body, each instrument having a means for transmitting an image out of the patient's body;
• obtaining a first image of the feature from a first vantage point using the first surgical instrument;
• obtaining a second image of the feature using the second surgical instrument from a second vantage point, the second vantage point being at a known position and orientation with respect to the first vantage point;
• locating the anatomical feature in both images;
• computing the position of the anatomical feature relative to the vantage points using positional information about the feature in each image, together with the known position and orientation of the two vantage points with respect to each other.

A method of determining positional information about an anatomical feature comprising the steps of:

• inserting a first surgical instrument into the patient's body, the instrument having a means for transmitting an image out of the patient's body;
• obtaining a first image of the feature from a first vantage point using the first surgical instrument;
• obtaining a second image of the feature using the first surgical instrument from a second vantage point, the second vantage point being at a known position and orientation with respect to the first vantage point;
• locating the anatomical feature in the first and second images;
• and computing the position of the anatomical feature relative to the first and second vantage points using positional information about the feature in each of the first and second images together with the known position and orientation of the two vantage points with respect to each other.