Patent attributes
The present teachings generally provide for a surgical navigation system for use with an x-ray imaging device. The x-ray imaging device acquires x-ray images of an anatomical structure of interest at an angular position. The surgical navigation system includes a localizer with a tracking sensor, a gravity vector sensor coupled to the tracking sensor, a tracking device configured to be coupled to the C-arm so as to be movable with the C-arm between a plurality of angular positions. The tracking device comprises a tracking element detectable by the tracking sensor. A computer processor is operatively coupled with the localizer and configured to implement an imaging routine that receives tracking data from the tracking sensor and a gravity vector from the gravity vector sensor, generating an image vector indicative of the angular position at which the x-ray image was acquired.