  Real-time transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) image guidance during robot-assisted
laparoscopic radical prostatectomy has the potential to enhance surgery
outcomes. Whether conventional or photoacoustic TRUS is used, the robotic
system and the TRUS must be registered to each other. Accurate registration can
be performed using photoacoustic (PA markers). However, this requires a manual
search by an assistant [19]. This paper introduces the first automatic search
for PA markers using a transrectal ultrasound robot. This effectively reduces
the challenges associated with the da Vinci-TRUS registration. This paper
investigated the performance of three search algorithms in simulation and
experiment: Weighted Average (WA), Golden Section Search (GSS), and Ternary
Search (TS). For validation, a surgical prostate scenario was mimicked and
various ex vivo tissues were tested. As a result, the WA algorithm can achieve
0.53 degree average error after 9 data acquisitions, while the TS and GSS
algorithm can achieve 0.29 degree and 0.48 degree average errors after 28 data
acquisitions.
