  In surgical navigation, finding correspondence between preoperative plan and
intraoperative anatomy, the so-called registration task, is imperative. One
promising approach is to intraoperatively digitize anatomy and register it with
the preoperative plan. State-of-the-art commercial navigation systems implement
such approaches for pedicle screw placement in spinal fusion surgery. Although
these systems improve surgical accuracy, they are not gold standard in clinical
practice. Besides economical reasons, this may be due to their difficult
integration into clinical workflows and unintuitive navigation feedback.
Augmented Reality has the potential to overcome these limitations.
Consequently, we propose a surgical navigation approach comprising
intraoperative surface digitization for registration and intuitive holographic
navigation for pedicle screw placement that runs entirely on the Microsoft
HoloLens. Preliminary results from phantom experiments suggest that the method
may meet clinical accuracy requirements.
