Real-time panorama imaging of sphenoid sinuses from monocular endoscopic views: An update based on clinical experiments

For operations of the pituitary gland, the most subtle method is a paranasal intervention through the sphenoid sinus. To assist the surgeon with this minimal invasive intervention, we have presented a stitching method to generate panorama images during an endoscopic exploration of the sinusoidal cavities by means of image processing in real-time. The panoramic view helps the surgeon to orient himself and navigate safely across the cavity to break through the sellar floor to the pituitary gland above. In this work we extent our initial experiments, which validated the method on a skull phantom only, by a study based on real patient data. Special attention is paid to the challenges arising from the application to real surgical endoscopic video, such as little textural structure of the tissue, low image quality, impurities caused by fluids and particles or unrestricted camera motion. So far we have applied the method to endoscopic video data of three patients with pituitary tumors to investigate its efficacy and robustness within the relevant scenario.