Computer‐Assisted NOTES: From Augmented Reality to Automation

Abstract

Computer-assisted surgery led to a major improvement in medicine. Such an improvement can be summarized in four major steps. The first one consists in an automated 3D modeling of patients from their medical images. The second one consists in using this modeling in surgical planning and simulation software, offering the opportunity to train the surgical gesture before carrying it out. The third step consists in intraoperatively superimposing pre-operative data onto the real view of patients. This augmented reality provides surgeons a view in transparency of their patient allowing to track instruments and improve pathology targeting. The last one consists in robotization of the procedure by replacing a human gesture by a robotic gesture that can be automatized. Essentially developed for open and minimally invasive surgery, these techniques have now started to be applied to NOTES procedures. This chapter presents these four steps and their current application to NOTES.