Patent ID: 8849374

Claim:
A surgery assistance system, comprising: a rigid endoscope having a position-orientation detection marker; 3-dimensional (3D) shape measurement means for obtaining data corresponding to a 3D surface of a patient, and data corresponding to a 3D surface of the position-orientation detection marker; computation means including means for aligning pre-stored tomographical data of the patient and the data corresponding to the 3D surface of said patient measured by said 3D shape measurement means; means for computing a 3D position of an optical axis of said rigid endoscope on the basis of first data corresponding to the 3D surface of said position-orientation detection marker measured by said 3D shape measurement means after the rigid endoscope is inserted into the patient and a pre-obtained 3D relative position relationship between an actual optical axis of said rigid endoscope and said position-orientation detection marker; means for identifying a tissue wall in the patient from said 3D tomographical data; and intersection computation means for computing an intersection of said tissue wall and the optical axis of said rigid endoscope of which the 3D position is computed; and display means for displaying said 3D tomographical data, the optical axis of said rigid endoscope of which the 3D position is computed, and the intersection of said tissue wall and the optical axis of said rigid endoscope of which the 3D position is computed.