# EndoSERV: A Vision-based Endoluminal Robot Navigation System

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.08324 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.08324/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 31 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [GPT-4o System Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21276/) (2024)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [Depth Anything: Unleashing the Power of Large-Scale Unlabeled Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10891/) (2024)
- [Contrastive Learning for Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.15651/) (2020)
- [iMAP: Implicit Mapping and Positioning in Real-Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12352/) (2021)
- [Gaussian Splatting SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06741/) (2023)
- [INeRF: Inverting Neural Radiance Fields for Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05877/) (2020)
- [Co-SLAM: Joint Coordinate and Sparse Parametric Encodings for Neural Real-Time SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14377/) (2023)
- [Visual Camera Re-Localization from RGB and RGB-D Images Using DSAC](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.12324/) (2020)
- [EGSDE: Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation via Energy-Guided Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.06635/) (2022)
- [NICER-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scene Encoding for RGB SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03594/) (2023)
- [ESLAM: Efficient Dense SLAM System Based on Hybrid Representation of Signed Distance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11704/) (2022)
- [UNIT-DDPM: UNpaired Image Translation with Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05358/) (2021)
- [Accelerated Coordinate Encoding: Learning to Relocalize in Minutes using RGB and Poses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14059/) (2023)
- [R2Former: Unified Retrieval and Reranking Transformer for Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03410/) (2023)
- [Lite-Mono: A Lightweight CNN and Transformer Architecture for Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13202/) (2022)
- [Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation via Neural Schr"odinger Bridge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15086/) (2023)
- [Colonoscopy 3D Video Dataset with Paired Depth from 2D-3D Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08903/) (2022)
- [DiffuseMix: Label-Preserving Data Augmentation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14881/) (2024)
- [Self-Supervised Monocular Depth and Ego-Motion Estimation in Endoscopy: Appearance Flow to the Rescue](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08122/) (2021)
- [Unsupervised Reverse Domain Adaptation for Synthetic Medical Images via Adversarial Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06606/) (2017)
- [Surgical-DINO: Adapter Learning of Foundation Models for Depth Estimation in Endoscopic Surgery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.06013/) (2024)
- [Dense Depth Estimation in Monocular Endoscopy with Self-supervised Learning Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.07766/) (2019)
- [EndoDAC: Efficient Adapting Foundation Model for Self-Supervised Depth Estimation from Any Endoscopic Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.08672/) (2024)
- [Dense RGB SLAM with Neural Implicit Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.08930/) (2023)
- [EndoGSLAM: Real-Time Dense Reconstruction and Tracking in Endoscopic Surgeries using Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15124/) (2024)
- [Augmenting Colonoscopy using Extended and Directional CycleGAN for Lossy Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12473/) (2020)
- [MI^2GAN: Generative Adversarial Network for Medical Image Domain Adaptation using Mutual Information Constraint](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11180/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Robot-assisted endoluminal procedures are increasingly used for early cancer intervention. However, the intricate, narrow and tortuous pathways within the luminal anatomy pose substantial difficulties for robot navigation. Vision-based navigation offers a promising solution, but existing localization approaches are error-prone due to tissue deformation, in vivo artifacts and a lack of distinctive landmarks for consistent localization. This paper presents a novel EndoSERV localization method to address these challenges. It includes two main parts, textiti.e., SEgment-to-structure and Real-to-Virtual mapping, and hence the name. For long-range and complex luminal structures, we divide them into smaller sub-segments and estimate the odometry independently. To cater for label insufficiency, an efficient transfer technique maps real image features to the virtual domain to use virtual pose ground truth. The training phases of EndoSERV include an offline pretraining to extract texture-agnostic features, and an online phase that adapts to real-world conditions. Extensive experiments based on both public and clinical datasets have been performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method even without any real pose labels.