Asensus Surgical US, Inc.

In a system and method for creating a panoramic view of a surgical procedure, a camera is positioned in a body cavity and captures real time images of a surgical site within the body cavity. The real time images are stitched together with non-real time images of the body cavity, that were captured during the surgical procedure prior to time t. The stitching of the real-time and non-real-time images creates a panoramic image that is displayed on a display.

A multi-camera, multi-view light field endoscope simultaneously captures images of a body cavity using a plurality of camera sensors. The system makes use of input from an eye and head tracker to generate control signals selecting the specific pair of camera sensors that correspond to the user's eye and head position. By selecting only signals from the selected pair, transmission bandwidth, data rate, and system complexity are reduced. Use of the eye and head tracker give the user a look around, autostereoscopic capability with a simple, commercially available stereo display.

In a system and method of calibrating a stereoscopic camera, a target pattern is electronically displayed on a display. The camera to be calibrated captures images of the target pattern using a stereoscopic camera while the displayed target pattern is altered over time. The captured images are analyzed and calibration parameters for the stereoscopic camera are determined.

A method of calibrating a camera used for robotic surgery makes use of a target pattern positioned on a robotic manipulator. The camera to be calibrated is moved by the robotic manipulator to move the camera to a plurality of positions and orientations, ideally in closed loop fashion to maintain the target pattern within the camera's image plane. The camera captures images of the target pattern while in the plurality of positions and orientations. A processor receives the captured images and analyzes them to determine calibration parameters for the camera.

Intrinsic and extrinsic calibration parameters are determined in real time for a camera positioned to capture images of a surgical site in a body cavity. The camera is positioned on a manipulator arm and used to capture a plurality of frames of images of the surgical site using the at least one camera while moving the camera within the body cavity. 3D position information corresponding to positions of the camera is recorded during capture of said images. A plurality of features between two or more frames of the captured images are matched, and a 3D structure of the plurality of features is reconstructed using multi-frame triangulation. A penalty measure is estimated using a reprojection error. The distance in the image plane between the projected 3D feature and the measurement. Intrinsic calibration parameters are estimated for the at least one camera, and refined to minimize the penalty measure.