Automated 3D Mosaicing and Scan Trajectories for Surveillance of Bladder Cancer

While cystoscopic surveillance, which uses a type of endoscope used by urologists to view the interior surface of patient’s bladder, is regarded as the “gold standard” for bladder cancer detection, it remains imperfect. Physicians advance a rigid or flexible scope through a patient’s urethra and into his/her bladder, manually manipulating the probe in order to view the entire inner surface of the bladder. Thus, the completeness of cystoscopic examinations remains completely dependent on the examining physician. We propose a few scanning trajectories, which can be potentially adopted in the mechatronics approach to minimize operator errors. An automated image mosaicing software, which would afford 3D reconstruction of the bladder for more efficient surveillance, is proposed to achieve a high resolution and comprehensive model of the bladder. The software adequately reconstructs the internal surface of the virtual model under all three scan trajectories as a proof-of-concept.