Automatic adjustment of laparoscopic pose using deep reinforcement learning

Abstract. Laparoscopic arm and instrument arm control tasks are usually accomplished by an operative doctor. Because of intensive workload and long operative time, this method not only causes the operation not to be flow, but also increases operation risk. In this paper, we propose a method for automatic adjustment of laparoscopic pose based on vision and deep reinforcement learning. Firstly, based on the Deep Q Network framework, the raw laparoscopic image is taken as the only input to estimate the Q values corresponding to joint actions. Then, the surgical instrument pose information used to formulate reward functions is obtained through object-tracking and image-processing technology. Finally, a deep neural network adopted in the Q-value estimation consists of convolutional neural networks for feature extraction and fully connected layers for policy learning. The proposed method is validated in simulation. In different test scenarios, the laparoscopic arm can be well automatically adjusted so that surgical instruments with different postures are in the proper position of the field of view. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the method in learning the highly non-linear mapping between laparoscopic images and the optimal action policy of a laparoscopic arm.