A piecewise patch-to-model matching method for image-guided cardiac catheter ablation

Accurate and fast fusion and display of real-time images of anatomy and associated data is critical for effective use in image guided procedures, including image guided cardiac catheter ablation. We have developed a piecewise patch-to-model matching method, a modification of the contractive projection point technique, for accurate and rapid matching between an intra-operative cardiac surface patch and a pre-operative cardiac surface model. Our method addresses the problems of fusing multi-modality images and using non-rigid deformation between a surface patch and a surface model. A projection lookup table, K-nearest neighborhood search, and a final iteration of point-to-projection are used to reliably find the surface correspondence. Experimental results demonstrate that the method is fast, accurate and robust for real-time matching of intra-operative surface patches to pre-operative 3D surface models of the left atrium.