We propose a spatio-temporal mixing kinematic data estimation method to estimate the shape of the colon with deformations caused by colonoscope insertion. Endoscope tracking or a navigation system that navigates physicians to target positions is needed to reduce such complications as organ perforations. Although many previous methods focused to track bronchoscopes and surgical endoscopes, few number of colonoscope tracking methods were proposed. This is because the colon largely deforms during colonoscope insertion. The deformation causes significant tracking errors. Colon deformation should be taken into account in the tracking process. We propose a colon shape estimation method using a Kinematic Spatio-Temporal data Mixer (KST-Mixer) that can be used during colonoscope insertions to the colon. Kinematic data of a colonoscope and the colon, including positions and directions of their centerlines, are obtained using electromagnetic and depth sensors. The proposed method separates the data into sub-groups along the spatial and temporal axes. The KST-Mixer extracts kinematic features and mix them along the spatial and temporal axes multiple times. We evaluated colon shape estimation accuracies in phantom studies. The proposed method achieved 11.92 mm mean Euclidean distance error, the smallest of the previous methods. Statistical analysis indicated that the proposed method significantly reduced the error compared to the previous methods.

翻译：我们提出了一种时空混合运动数据估计方法，用于估算因结肠镜插入而发生形变的结肠形状。为减少器官穿孔等并发症，需要内镜追踪或导航系统来引导医生到达目标位置。尽管先前许多方法专注于支气管镜和手术内镜的追踪，但针对结肠镜追踪的方法却寥寥无几。这是因为结肠在结肠镜插入过程中会发生大幅度形变，这种形变会导致显著的追踪误差，因此追踪过程必须考虑结肠形变。我们提出了一种利用运动时空数据混合器（KST-Mixer）的结肠形状估计方法，该方法可用于结肠镜插入结肠过程中。通过电磁传感器和深度传感器获取结肠镜及结肠的运动数据，包括其中心线的位置和方向。所提方法将数据沿空间轴和时间轴划分为子组，KST-Mixer 提取运动特征，并沿空间和时间轴多次混合这些特征。我们在体模研究中评估了结肠形状估计的精度。所提方法实现了11.92毫米的平均欧氏距离误差，为现有方法中最小。统计分析表明，与先前方法相比，所提方法显著降低了误差。