A novel method of 6-DoF electromagnetic navigation system for surgical robot

The accurate magnetic localization and orientation technique has dramatically enhanced the applications of capsule endoscope for the gastrointestinal (GI) tract examination. Yet, the surgical robot has been hindered to use widely due to the limitations of current surgical navigation technique. In this paper, an electromagnetic navigation system based on coils and magnetic sensor is introduced. The coils perform as the excitation sources to create the variable magnetic field, and which is received by the magnetic sensor. The coupling between excitation sources and magnetic sensor can determine a set of equations which contain the 6-D parameters of position and orientation information. Then, the nonlinear algorithm is given to solve these equations, and the simulation results show that we can obtain acceptable accuracy of position and orientation through this method. In additional, the relationship between the SNR and the accuracy of position and orientation also be analyzed, at the minimum SNR level with 45dB, the average error of position and orientation are 1mm and 0.5°.