  For minimally invasive endovascular surgery, the localization of catheters
and guidewires inside the human body is essential. Electromagnetic (EM)
tracking is one technology that allows localizing such surgical instruments.
For localizing intra-operatively EM-tracked instruments with respect to
preoperative volume data, it is necessary to bring pre- and intraoperative
imaging into the same coordinate frame. In most existing solutions, such
registration requires additional interactions, modifying the procedure's
original workflow. We propose a new method taking advantage of Bioelectric
signals to initialize and register preoperative volumes to the EM tracking
system without significantly changing the interventional workflow. We envision
the most natural use-case of our concept in cardiac electrophysiology (EP)
procedures, in which EP catheters are already equipped with all the necessary
sensing, including electric sensing for the measurement of electrophysiological
signals and EM tracking for catheter localization. We use EP catheters for
Bioelectric sensing to detect local features of the vasculature while advancing
the catheter inside the human body. Such features can be automatically labeled
before the procedure within the preoperative data. The combination of
Bioelectric and EM tracking can localize vascular features such as bifurcations
and stenosis within the EM tracking space. Mapping them to preoperative data
automatically registers patients' CT space to EM tracking. The proposed
registration process is entirely based on Bioelectric sensed features, with no
need for external markers or other interventional imaging devices.
