Pose Optimization of a C-Arm Imaging Device to Reduce Intraoperative Radiation Exposure of Staff and Patient During Interventional Procedures
Résumé
Minimally-invasive (MI) procedures are becoming more popular and frequent due to their benefits such as reduced patient trauma and hospitalization time. However, several common types of MI interventions are performed under X-ray guidance, which exposes both patients and staff to harmful ionizing radiation. Radiation exposure has therefore become a major concern for the medical community. Yet, few efforts to actively reduce it by exploiting the robotic capabilities of the devices present in the surgical suite have been performed. The propagation of radiation highly depends on the X-ray source positioning. Hence, we propose an approach to optimize the imaging device's pose in order to reduce the exposure to radiation of both patient and staff, while preserving the visibility of the targeted anatomical structure in the acquired image. Our method is based on the optimization of a cost function, which takes the current context and device parameters into account to compute the overall radiation exposure. It relies on GPU-accelerated Monte Carlo methods to simulate radiation propagation and performs the optimization in quasi real-time. When evaluated on a set of standard imaging configurations, our approach is able to recommend a device's pose in a few seconds, for which the delivered dose is reduced. Such an approach can contribute to lower the probability of appearance and severity of long-term negative effects due to radiation exposure and improve overall radiation safety.