A systematic comparison of the accuracy of monocular RGB tracking and LiDAR for neuronavigation.

With the advent of augmented reality (AR), the use of AR-guided systems in the field of medicine has gained traction. However, the wide-scale adaptation of these systems requires highly accurate and reliable tracking. In this work, the tracking accuracy of two technology platforms, LiDAR and Vuforia, are developed and rigorously tested for a catheter placement neurological procedure. Several experiments (900) are performed for each technology across various combinations of catheter lengths and insertion trajectories. This analysis shows that the LiDAR platform outperformed Vuforia; which is the state-of-the-art in monocular RGB tracking solutions. LiDAR had 75% less radial distance error and 26% less angle deviation error. Results provide key insights into the value and utility of LiDAR-based tracking in AR guidance systems.