Hand-held laser scanner for 4-D anatomical surface modeling

The purpose of the present work is to develop a new kind of hand-held surface laser scanner for thorax surface acquisition for quantitative surgical outcomes evaluation in plastic and reconstructive surgery. The innovative aspect featured by the system is the reduction of surface-reconstruction artifacts due to patient movements and respiratory motion. This was obtained by fitting the patient with a configuration of passive markers, which was used to detect movements as well as to reconstruct a respiration-related signal to retrospectively gate the acquisition. Preliminary results show improvements in morphological surface reconstruction through a significant minimization of surface deformation and noise reduction. The increased quality of the reconstructed model allowed for multiple acquisitions of surface patches and subsequent registration.