# SurgTrack: CAD-Free 3D Tracking of Real-world Surgical Instruments

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.02598 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02598/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 30 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Sep 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [DROID-SLAM: Deep Visual SLAM for Monocular, Stereo, and RGB-D Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10869/) (2021)
- [NICE-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scalable Encoding for SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12130/) (2021)
- [Deep Learning for Person Re-identification: A Survey and Outlook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.04193/) (2020)
- [OnePose: One-Shot Object Pose Estimation without CAD Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12257/) (2022)
- [BundleSDF: Neural 6-DoF Tracking and 3D Reconstruction of Unknown Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14158/) (2023)
- [Keypoint Transformer: Solving Joint Identification in Challenging Hands and Object Interactions for Accurate 3D Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14639/) (2021)
- [BundleTrack: 6D Pose Tracking for Novel Objects without Instance or Category-Level 3D Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.00516/) (2021)
- [SurgPLAN: Surgical Phase Localization Network for Phase Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09965/) (2023)
- [ASI-Seg: Audio-Driven Surgical Instrument Segmentation with Surgeon Intention Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.19435/) (2024)
- [EndoUIC: Promptable Diffusion Transformer for Unified Illumination Correction in Capsule Endoscopy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.13705/) (2024)
- [Video-based Surgical Skills Assessment using Long term Tool Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.02247/) (2022)
- [VS-Assistant: Versatile Surgery Assistant on the Demand of Surgeons](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.08272/) (2024)
- [Transforming Surgical Interventions with Embodied Intelligence for Ultrasound Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12651/) (2024)
- [Surgical Temporal Action-aware Network with Sequence Regularization for Phase Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12603/) (2023)
- [PixTrack: Precise 6DoF Object Pose Tracking using NeRF Templates and Feature-metric Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03910/) (2022)

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

- [Towards Next-Generation Healthcare: A Survey of Medical Embodied AI for Perception, Decision-Making, and Action](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.15647/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Vision-based surgical navigation has received increasing attention due to its non-invasive, cost-effective, and flexible advantages. In particular, a critical element of the vision-based navigation system is tracking surgical instruments. Compared with 2D instrument tracking methods, 3D instrument tracking has broader value in clinical practice, but is also more challenging due to weak texture, occlusion, and lack of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) models for 3D registration. To solve these challenges, we propose the SurgTrack, a two-stage 3D instrument tracking method for CAD-free and robust real-world applications. In the first registration stage, we incorporate an Instrument Signed Distance Field (SDF) modeling the 3D representation of instruments, achieving CAD-freed 3D registration. Due to this, we can obtain the location and orientation of instruments in the 3D space by matching the video stream with the registered SDF model. In the second tracking stage, we devise a posture graph optimization module, leveraging the historical tracking results of the posture memory pool to optimize the tracking results and improve the occlusion robustness. Furthermore, we collect the Instrument3D dataset to comprehensively evaluate the 3D tracking of surgical instruments. The extensive experiments validate the superiority and scalability of our SurgTrack, by outperforming the state-of-the-arts with a remarkable improvement. The code and dataset are available at https://github.com/wenwucode/SurgTrack.