A novel noise filtered and occlusion removal: navigational accuracy in augmented reality-based constructive jaw surgery.

PURPOSE: Augmented reality-based constructive jaw surgery has been facing various limitations such as noise in real-time images, the navigational error of implants and jaw, image overlay error, and occlusion handling which have limited the implementation of augmented reality (AR) in corrective jaw surgery. This research aimed to improve the navigational accuracy, through noise and occlusion removal, during positioning of an implant in relation to the jaw bone to be cut or drilled.

METHOD: The proposed system consists of a weighting-based de-noising filter and depth mapping-based occlusion removal for removing any occluded object such as surgical tools, the surgeon's body parts, and blood.

RESULTS: The maxillary (upper jaw) and mandibular (lower jaw) jaw bone sample results show that the proposed method can achieve the image overlay error (video accuracy) of 0.23~0.35 mm and processing time of 8-12 frames per second compared to 0.35~0.45 mm and 6-11 frames per second by the existing best system.

CONCLUSION: The proposed system concentrates on removing the noise from the real-time video frame and the occlusion. Thus, the acceptable range of accuracy and the processing time are provided by this study for surgeons for carrying out a smooth surgical flow.