Visual Servoing for Tracking Cartilage with a Robotic Endoscope

Abstract

This paper describes the visual servoing of a robotic endoscope prototype by tracking cartilage in visual feedback from a miniature camera. To track the movement of tissue relative to the camera, three different image processing algorithms were implemented and compared in a first experiment on cartilage of a porcine knee. The experiment showed that tracking cartilage is feasible with a miniature camera and can be used to perform visual servoing with an endoscope.