Current trends in three-dimensional visualization and real-time navigation as well as robot-assisted technologies in hepatobiliary surgery

Figure 1 Intraoperative schematic of the electromagnetic tracking procedure. It shows a schematic diagram based on electromagnetic tracking navigation under a developing work by the Ohkohchi team which is used to track the position of the micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) within the magnetic field in real time without the need for line of sight and send the real-time information to a computer workstation, fuse the real-time intraoperative actual procedure and visual images with the preoperative computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging pictures to form a three-dimensional reconstruction image, and display the real intraoperative actual procedure and visual images and the corresponding reconstruction images side-by-side on a TV monitor to achieve real-time navigation of the surgical site (this is the project of “Development of Real-time Navigation System for Laparoscopic Hepatectomy”, University of Tsukuba, Japan, 2017.4-2020.3).