# Vision-Based Neurosurgical Guidance: Unsupervised Localization and Camera-Pose Prediction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.09355 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.09355/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 3 of its 22 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [YOLOv7: Trainable bag-of-freebies sets new state-of-the-art for real-time object detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.02696/) (2022)
- [ORBSLAM-based Endoscope Tracking and 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.08149/) (2016)
- [Live image-based neurosurgical guidance and roadmap generation using unsupervised embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.18019/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Conformal forecasting for surgical instrument trajectory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.04191/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Localizing oneself during endoscopic procedures can be problematic due to the lack of distinguishable textures and landmarks, as well as difficulties due to the endoscopic device such as a limited field of view and challenging lighting conditions. Expert knowledge shaped by years of experience is required for localization within the human body during endoscopic procedures. In this work, we present a deep learning method based on anatomy recognition, that constructs a surgical path in an unsupervised manner from surgical videos, modelling relative location and variations due to different viewing angles. At inference time, the model can map an unseen video's frames on the path and estimate the viewing angle, aiming to provide guidance, for instance, to reach a particular destination. We test the method on a dataset consisting of surgical videos of transsphenoidal adenomectomies, as well as on a synthetic dataset. An online tool that lets researchers upload their surgical videos to obtain anatomy detections and the weights of the trained YOLOv7 model are available at: https://surgicalvision.bmic.ethz.ch.