text:
The present invention provides an electromagnetic tracking system that includes a field generator and a field sensor arranged to generate and detect, respectively, an electromagnetic field. Both the transmitter and receiver coils are connected to signal conditioning and processing circuitry to provide outputs indicative of the coil signals. A processor operates on the signals to determine the coordinates of the sensing assembly relative to the generator assembly. The signal processor produces ratiometric outputs, and applies a mutual inductance model to solve for position/orientation coordinates. In some embodiments, a disturber in the form of a conductive ring or a sheath is disposed about an interfering piece of equipment to moderate and standardize disturbances due to eddy currents.
1. An electromagnetic tracking system comprising
a magnetic field generating unit driven by a drive signal,
a field sensing unit having a sensing signal responsive to a changing magnetic field, said changing magnetic field including a position-dependent field produced by said magnetic field generating unit,
the generating and sensing units being arranged to generate and to sense, respectively, an electromagnetic field in an arena of interest, and wherein at least one of said units is movable,
signal measurement and conditioning circuitry connected to said units to sample and digitize signal data for the field generating and field sensing units,
a distorter having a known structure disposed at a selected location in the arena of interest, and
a processor operative on the sampled and digitized signal data to determine relative coordinates and orientations of said field generating or field sensing unit, said processor modeling the distorter and the generating and sensing units to generate modeled signal data and fitting said modeled signal data to measured signal values to determine coordinates and orientations of said field generating and field sensing units.
2. The electromagnetic tracking system of
3. The electromagnetic tracking system of
4. The electromagnetic tracking system of
5. An electromagnetic tracking system comprising
a magnetic field generating unit driven by a drive signal,
a field sensing unit having a sensing signal responsive to a changing magnetic field, said changing magnetic field including a position-dependent field produced by said magnetic field generating unit,
the generating and sensing units being arranged to generate and to sense, respectively, an electromagnetic field in an arena of interest, and wherein at least one of said units is movable,
signal measurement and conditioning circuitry connected to said units to sample and digitize signal data for the field generating and field sensing units,
a distorter having a known structure disposed at a selected location in the arena of interest, and
a processor operative on the sampled and digitized signal data to determine relative coordinates and orientations of said field generating or field sensing unit, said processor modeling the distorter and the generating and sensing units to generate modeled signal data and fitting said modeled signal data to measured signal values to determine coordinates and orientations of said field generating and field sensing units, said processor modeling said distorter as a ring model.
6. An electromagnetic tracking system comprising
a magnetic field generating unit,
a field sensing unit,
the generating and sensing units being arranged to generate and to sense, respectively, an electromagnetic field in an arena of interest,
a distorter having a known structure disposed at a selected location in the arena of interest, and
a processor modeling the generating and sensing units to generate modeled signal data and fitting said modeled signal data to measured signal values to determine coordinates and orientations of said field generating and field sensing unit.
7. The electromagnetic tracking system of
8. The electromagnetic tracking system of
9. The electromagnetic tracking system of
10. The electromagnetic tracking system of
11. The electromagnetic tracking system of
12. The electromagnetic tracking system of
This application is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/108,197, entitled "Magnetic Tracking System," filed Mar. 27, 2002 now U.S. Pat. No. 6,774,624, which is hereby expressly incorporated by reference in its entirety.
The present invention relates to magnetic tracking systems of the type wherein a magnetic field is established in a relevant work area, and one or more magnetic field sensors are operated to sense values of a local magnetic field and are processed to determine the position of a tool, instrument or other identified object. In general, such systems operate using a field generating element or assembly, and a field sensing element or assembly, often in conjunction with other position determining elements, such as robotic stepper or optical tracker assemblies to track the relative changes in position between one or more fixed points or structures in the physical environment or associated images, and one or more moving or non-visible points or structures in the work arena.
Magnetic field generating or sensing assemblies for tracking may be implemented in various ways, with conventional analog wire coils forming current loops or paths, or with semiconductor or microlithographically-formed conductive leads or circuit board traces forming current paths, arranged in an appropriate geometry to generate or sense the desired field components. There may be a symmetry or duality between the generating or sensing elements. Thus, for example in many cases it is possible to have a small multi-coil array that generates a spatially distributed magnetic field and a similar or even identical array that senses the field so generated. Small coils offer the prospect of generating, to a close approximation, dipole fields, although small size may limit the attainable field strength or the achievable level of detection signal amplitude. The generating and sensing constructions may alternatively employ different scales, for example, with relatively large and/or high current coils to establish magnetic field components along different axes, and smaller, or more localized coil assemblies for sensing field values. Smaller coils, whether for sensing or generating, may, for example, be fastened to the body, or attached to workplace or surgical instruments, or to catheters or other body-inserted devices, to sense the magnetic field and track position of the attached structure.
In general, it is the aim of such magnetic tracking assemblies to define the spatial coordinates (e.g., position and orientation coordinates, either absolute or relative) where the movable magnetic assembly is located at a given instant in time. It is therefore necessary to characterize the magnetic field distribution or signal values with some degree of accuracy, and also necessary to accurately detect the field. The field distribution may be determined by a combination of field modeling and empirical field mapping. The latter, for example, may be carried out as a calibration or an initialization step, and may be performed to correct a theoretical field distribution for the presence of interfering structures. In any case, the spatial coordinates are generally computed for one magnetic assembly (transmitter or sensor) with respect to the other magnetic assembly (sensor or transmitter). Typically, one of these assemblies is itself fixed.
One area in which magnetic tracking has been useful is the area of image guided surgery. Typical image guided surgical systems acquire a set of images of an operative region of a patient's body, and track a surgical tool or instrument in relation to one or more sets of coordinates, e.g., spatial coordinates of the surgical work arena, the coordinates of the images themselves, or a target feature of the patient's anatomy. At the present time, such systems have been developed or proposed for a number of surgical procedures such as brain surgery and arthroscopic procedures on the knee, wrist, shoulder or spine, as well as certain types of angiography, cardiac or other interventional radiological procedures and biopsies. Such procedures may also involve pre-operative or intraoperative x-ray images being taken to correct the position of and refine the display of, or otherwise navigate a tool or instrument involved in the procedure in relation to anatomical features of interest.
Several areas of surgery have required very precise planning and control. Such tracking is useful for the placement of an elongated probe, radiation needle, fastener or other article in tissue or bone that is internal or is otherwise positioned so that it is difficult to view directly. For brain surgery, stereotactic frames may be used to define the entry point, probe angle and probe depth to access a site in the brain. Furthermore, many of the foregoing techniques may be used in conjunction with previously-compiled three-dimensional diagnostic images such as MRI, PET or CT scan images to provide accurate tissue coordinates to which the tracked physical elements may be referenced. Such systems offer valuable improvements for procedures such as placement of pedicle screws in the spine, where visual and fluoroscopic imaging directions cannot capture the axial view that would be required to safely orient the insertion path through bony material close to the spinal cord.
When used with existing CT, PET or MRI image sets, the previously recorded diagnostic image sets, by virtue of their controlled scan formation and the spatial mathematics of their reconstruction algorithms, define a high precision three dimensional rectilinear coordinate system. However, even when provided with such reference images it is necessary to correlate and fit available measurement and views and anatomical features visible from the surface, with features in the diagnostic images and with the external coordinates of the tools being employed. This is often done by providing implanted fiducials, by adding external visible or trackable markers that may be imaged, and by enabling a surgeon or radiologist to use a keyboard or mouse to identify fiducials or features in the various images, and thus map common sets of coordinate registration points in the different images. Given a fit of spatial points to image points, software may then track changing positions in an automated way (for example, simply transforming the coordinates that are output by an external coordinate measurement device, such as a suitably programmed off-the-shelf optical tracking assembly.) Instead of correlating image positions of a set of imageable fiducials appearing in fluoroscopic or CT images, such systems can also operate with simple optical tracking, employing an initialization protocol wherein the surgeon touches or points at a number of bony prominences or other recognizable anatomic features in order to define the external coordinates in relation to the patient anatomy and to initiate software tracking of those features.
For such applications, electromagnetic tracking offers the advantage that its position-defining field, a magnetic field, penetrates the body without attenuation or change so that tracking may continue during a surgical procedure, unimpaired by the blocking that occurs with visible light trackers (e.g., due to operating room personnel moving into positions that obstruct the line-of-sight paths required by optical trackers). Optical or ultrasonic tracking, by contrast, may require a larger or excess number of line-of-sight paths, and corresponding transponders and/or detectors to assure that triangulation is always possible despite occluded pathways. The body-penetrating electromagnetic fields also allow one to track locations or movements inside the body with minimal resort to the fluoroscopic or ultrasound techniques normally required for visualization.
Among electromagnetic tracking techniques, several principal approaches are known. In one, relatively large Helmholtz coils establish well defined and highly uniform independent magnetic field components or gradients along each of the X, Y and Z axes in a work arena, and the static field components are detected by a localized detector to determine position coordinates. This approach has been proposed, for example, for cranial surgery, where such coils may define a suitably localized region encompassing the entire operative arena. Another principal approach involves using time-varying dipole fields e.g., dipole fields established by driving field-generating coils with an AC current signal. While the latter approach offers some processing advantages (such as being able to synchronously demodulate induced signals, and thus cumulate detected signal values to enhance sensitivity, and also the ability to establish the X, Y and Z field components at different frequencies so that detected sensor output signals may be separated or even demodulated simultaneously), it has the disadvantage that varying magnetic fields induce eddy currents in conductive structures found within the field. Induced currents themselves then generate secondary magnetic fields, thus introducing distortions into the expected or calibrated field distribution. Conductive or metal structures are in fact commonly present in a tracking environment, whether it be an avionics, surgical or industrial tracking environment.
The latter problem has historically been addressed by the observation that for a fixed metal disturber located at least twice as far from the field generator as is the field sensor, the induced disturbance will be low, e.g., under one percent, so that by restricting the tracked arena to a region sufficiently removed from the disturbing structure, accuracy may be achieved. However, this approach may be unrealistically restrictive for certain applications, including some image guided surgery applications, where highly disturbing equipment (such as the imaging assembly of a fluoroscope) is necessarily placed as close as possible to the work arena in which tracking is to occur. Another common alternative approach would be to map the disturbed fields or detected signal levels that occur close to the distorters present in the work arena, so that a processor can more accurately determine coordinates from the run time field values or the induced signals detected by a sensor. However, as a practical matter, such mapping is not only likely to require a time-consuming preliminary set-up operation, but may require that the set-up be carried out afresh for each new arrangement of operating room equipment that introduces different distortions, i.e., when equipment is changed or moved.
In addition to the practical problem of accurately detecting the field, there is the theoretical problem of converting the signal measurements into position and orientation coordinates.
On a fundamental level, the task that must be addressed by any electromagnetic tracking system is to computationally determine a unique position from the various measured parameters (typically induced voltages indicative of field strength). Often the relevant equations have several solutions, and care must be taken to operate within a single-valued domain (typically a hemisphere, quadrant or octant), thus limiting the selection of the initial generator or receiver fixed locations to establish a sufficiently well behaved field region, and restricting the allowable work arena in relation thereto, or else providing additional, or extrinsic data inputs to resolve ambiguities or refine computations. Beyond encountering multi-valued coordinate solutions, the accuracy of the coordinate determination processing may depend quite critically on the relative positions of generating and sensing elements. Processing equations may break down or solutions may become poorly defined as the sensing or generating element approaches or crosses a particular plane or axis, or one of its pitch, yaw or roll angle coordinates approaches 0 or 90 degrees, becomes too acute, or becomes too oblique.
Another practical problem stems from the dynamic range of the sensed signals, which varies greatly with distance/position, and may drop to quite low levels with increasing distance from the transmitter, or with decreasing size of the generating or sensing coils. Often, as a field unit moves to different positions, different gains must be determined on the fly, or additional gain stages must be used in order to obtain adequate signal values. This introduces some complexity and potential for error in normalizing the signals to accurately fit together readings from two different or even closely contiguous regions.
Thus, while magnetic tracking offers certain significant advantages, particularly for surgical applications, there remains a need for improved systems and processing to enhance accuracy of coordinate determinations.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an electromagnetic tracker of enhanced accuracy.
It would also be desirable to provide an electromagnetic tracker having enhanced immunity to common field distortions.
One or more of these and other desirable features are obtained in an electromagnetic tracking system wherein a field generating unit and a field sensing unit are arranged to generate and to sense, respectively an electromagnetic field in an arena of interest. At least one of the units is movable, and the units are connected to signal conditioning and processing circuitry that detects the levels of the transmitter drive signals and the received signals, ratiometrically combining them to form a matrix representative of the mutual inductance of each of the pairs of component coils. The mutual inductance information, providing functions of the relative positions and orientations of the two units, is then processed to determine corresponding coordinates.
Since mutual inductance is a symmetric property, i.e., depending simply on the geometries of the transmission and receiving coils and their relative positions, the system may interchange transmitter and receiver units, employing quite small coil assemblies, yet use a model that gives a direct computation of coordinates without excessive iterative approximations, and without resort to the multitude of gain level and other normalization corrections otherwise typically needed when working from magnetic field intensity measurements. The equations may be processed and solved in real time to effect surgical or other position tracking, and various corrections and calibration of signal magnitude (e.g., for cross-coupling of coils or for finite-size and non-circular coil geometries) are readily implemented.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, the magnetic tracking systems of the invention may employ signal conditioning or processing electronics in which relevant signals pass through fixed gain amplifiers to high precision (e.g, 24 bit A/D) digital converters. This bit size encompasses a dynamic range effective for multi-bit representation of signals encountered at all regions of the intended tracking area, thereby avoiding the need for variable gain or AGC elements, or for multiple or different preamps having different gain levels, as one coil assembly moves further from the other. Thus, the provision of a common preamplifier with a high precision sampler eliminates patching and the errors due to inaccurate gain ratios between gain states.
In accordance with another or further aspect of the invention, the processor employs a model or set of equations that operate, with the sensor output values, to determine the position/orientation coordinates of the transmitter/receiver assemblies, and when a tracked magnetic coil assembly element approaches a singular region, i.e., a plane or region where the model becomes ill-defined, inaccurate or lacks a solution in the coordinate system, the processor operates by transforming to a coordinate representation in which the detected values lie in a well-defined or non-singular region. The processor then solves to determine a coordinate measurement, and transforms back to the underlying or original coordinate system.
In accordance with another aspect, an operating room system of the invention may employ a conductive shield, or a sheath structure configured to fit about or contain an interfering component or piece of equipment. The sheath standardizes the magnetic field disturbance introduced by the component. In some instances the sheath may be a metal cylinder, dimensioned to enclose the disturbing piece of equipment. The sheath or cylinder may be formed of sheet metal of a gauge such that eddy currents are induced by the magnetic field, thus giving rise to a standardized field disturbance originating at a contour or surface external to the equipment. Alternatively, other suitable conductive materials, such as a carbon fiber composite material, may be used. The sheath also moderates or effectively nulls electromagnetic disturbances originating within its contour, e.g., at the underlying piece of equipment disposed within the sheath. The inclusion of this standardized disturbance in a system of the invention permits the interchange of different pieces of equipment without introducing excessive variations in resulting local disturbance characteristics. Disturbances may thus be mapped, or even modeled, in a single initial set up operation, without necessitating compilation of a new disturbance map for each new piece of equipment
In accordance with another or additional aspect of the invention, rather than simply introducing a sheath to form a standardized disturbance, the processor may model such a disturbance. For example, the processor may model a conductive sheath fitted about a certain region as a conductive ring or cylinder at that region (using the known dimensions and behavior characteristics of the sheet metal material). The modeled disturbance may then be added to the stored values of a map of the undisturbed electromagnetic field to form an enhanced field map, or may be otherwise applied to enhance accuracy of tracking determinations. The modeled field may also be used to provide a seed value for determining position and orientation coordinates. A fitting procedure then refines the initial value to enhance the accuracy of the P&O determination.
These and other features of the invention will be understood from the description below and accompanying claims, taken together with the Figures illustrating embodiments thereof wherein:
The present invention is an improved electromagnetic tracking system which may, by way of example, be employed in an operating room or clinical setting to determine the position and orientation of an object such as a catheter, surgical tool, marker or the like in relation to other physical structures, or in relation to images that may, for example, have coordinates assigned thereto by other means, such as via coordinatized 3-D image sets, position-defining frames, or correlation with imaged or tracked fiducials or markers. A great number of such systems are known, being described for example in U.S. Pat. No. 5,967,980 and related patents of M. Ferre et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,307,072, and others, so the features of such systems will not be further described here.
As relevant to a first aspect of the present invention, an electromagnetic tracking system includes a magnetic field generator and a magnetic field sensor together with signal conditioning circuitry and a processor for processing the conditioned signals. The generator and sensor are also referred to as transmitter and receiver below. In general, a varying current injected into one coil assembly produces a magnetic field, and this field induces a voltage in the other coil assembly. The induced voltage V is proportional to the rate of change of the applied current I, with a constant of proportionality equal to Lm, the mutual inductance. According to one aspect of the invention, a magnetic tracking system is configured to apply the transmitter drive signals and the induced receiver assembly signals to determine mutual inductances, from which the processor then determines the coordinates—i.e., the position and orientation coordinates, or simply "P&O"—of one coil assembly of the system with respect to the other coil assembly.
For two closed circuits the mutual inductance is given by Neumann's formula, and is equal to an expression which depends only on the geometry of the closed circuits (e.g., the coils), and not on the electronics used to measure the mutual inductance. Since the mutual inductance Lm is a ratio independent of applied current, wave form or frequency, it remains a well defined measurement parameter under a wide variety of conditions, offering improved performance in real operating environments. With three transmitting coils and three receiving coils, nine mutual inductances provide an over-determined system for derivation of the position and orientation coordinates.
In some embodiments, the roles of transmitter and receiver assemblies may be interchanged, each comprising a substantially identical three axis dipole coil assembly. Preferably these assemblies are built so the three coils of an assembly each exhibit the same effective area, are oriented orthogonally to one another, and are centered at the same point. For many of the applications alluded to above, the coils are quite small and ideally are small enough (compared to the transmitter-receiver distance) that they may, as an initial approximation, be considered to exhibit dipole behavior. However, more generally, the system includes embodiments discussed more fully below, wherein one or more of the coils are modeled or their signals processed as finite size transmitter or receiver.
It should be noted that the closed magnetic generating or receiving circuit includes the coil, its connecting cable and some electronics to which the cable is connected. In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention discussed further below, contributions of these extrinsic or ancillary circuit elements are reduced or eliminated, permitting a simple and highly accurate model of the coil alone with a direct short across the coil leads.
The various signals are transmitted, sampled, and combined and processed in coordination, for which operation a timing and synchronization control unit 30 forms a number of basic synchronized timing signals to define or control, for example, the multiplexing of signals between the transmission and receiving coils, control timing of the digitizing circuits, control the analog-to-digital (ADC) sampling rate, and the processing of the digitized raw signals from the coils to produce a processed raw data output. The host processor also operates with the raw data to effect the computational algorithms for determining coordinates and correcting position and orientation determinations.
As shown in this embodiment, a clock generator circuit 30 provides timing signals which are applied to different units for effecting synchronized processing described further below. These units include a signal sampling analog-to-digital converter 114 a (sometimes referred to as ADC 114 or simply an A/D unit, below), which digitizes the signal values received from the receiver assembly and the drive signal values sampled from the transmitter assembly; a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) 114 b which converts digital drive waveform signals to analog voltages for powering the amplifier which supplies transmitter drive signals; and a digital signal processing unit 18 and wave form generator 40.
The wave form generator 40 is a digital frequency synthesizer that generates digital values of a sine wave signal at one or more selected frequencies. These may include, for example, a separate frequency for driving each of the transmitter coils. These digital values are converted to analog values by DAC 114 b, and are fed to a power amplifier and filter 50 for driving each transmitter coil. Advantageously, the power amplifier may be a voltage amplifier. The drive signal at any given time, is switched by a current multiplexer to the appropriate coil, and simultaneously the induced voltages in the receiving coils are demodulated at the frequency of the transmitted drive signal. Meanwhile, the drive current to the transmitter assembly is detected by a current sensor 51 a and is measured by current measuring circuitry 60.
As further shown in
The receiver coils Rx, Ry, Rz provide their voltage outputs to a preamp and filter 80, the output of which is fed to the analog-to-digital converter ADC 114 a, as described above, to produce digital signal values for processing. Converter 114 a also receives as an input, the outputs of the current measuring circuitry 60, so that the ADC 114 a provides digital values of both the calibration coil current and the transmitter coil currents to the digital signal processing unit 18. Coordination between the various transmitting, receiving, sensing and converting steps is carried out with timing signals from the clock generator circuitry 30. By way of example, clock circuitry 30 may operate with a 25 megahertz clock, dividing it down (e.g., by 256) to set an ADC sample rate of 97.65625 kilohertz, which is successively divided by 2, by 1440, and by 256 to provide sample rate framing signals of 48.828125 kilohertz for the DAC, and end of cycle frame signal at 33.90842 Hz for a sum of products (SOP) processing module implemented in the signal processor DSP 18. Further frequency division may provide a current multiplexer cycle rate (for switching transmitter drive cycles to different coils) of 0.13245477 Hertz, or other synchronized timing signals as appropriate. Thus, operation of the various hardware units shown in
One of the clock signals is fed to a digital wave form generator 40 that synthesizes three distinct drive frequencies for the x-, y- and z-transmitter coils. It will be understood that the digital wave form generator 40 may be implemented in the host processor 20. However, it is preferably a specialized frequency synthesis chip or circuit, which produces a digital continuous sine wave of precise frequency and phase. As described further below, the different frequencies are used to drive independent magnetic field generator coils, and corresponding signals induced in receiver coils are detected and processed in a simple digital demodulator, a sum-of-products processor. Preferably, the synthesized frequencies are integral multiples of the sum of products digital signal processing cycle rates (i.e., the cycle rates of the DSP unit 18) so that the sine wave repeats exactly every SOP cycle with no discontinuity between cycles. The frequencies so generated are fixed, and the sine wave generator may be implemented in a known fashion by precalculating samples of the desired sign wave signals and storing the samples in a programmable read only memory (PROM). The PROM addresses are then driven by signals from timing generating counters (not shown) so that the PROM outputs the samples in the serial format required by the digital-to-analog converter 114 b. Another PROM output may implement the divide by 1440 control logic.
The digital output values of generator 40 are converted to a differential analog voltage in the DAC circuitry 114 b, which may, for example, be a 24-bit Deltasigma digital-analog-converter. Its output analog signal is amplified by the amplifier 50 which may, for example, be implemented with a low pass filter and a fixed gain differential amplifier.
As is apparent from the circuitry described thus far, systems of the invention set out to measure both the transmitter coil drive currents and the receiver coil induced voltages. These are ratiometrically combined to form mutual inductance measurements. Various further construction details may be practiced in order to have the detected signals represent as accurately as possible the desired positional field dependence.
As shown in
Further, because the impedance of the amplifier r input is high compared to the impedance of virtual ground or real ground, and its current signal is low, the current drawn through the r connection is substantially less than (e.g., typically 104 times less than) the current through the coil itself. This small error may be estimated and corrected mathematically in subsequent processing. Similarly, the coaxial cable capacitance may shunt a small current around the coil; this current may also be estimated and corrected mathematically.
As further shown in
In addition, as shown in
The overall arrangement of the transmitter section is shown in FIG. 5C. The driver/amplifier 50 is connected in turn to each of the coils and referenced by a current-switching multiplexer (CMX) 60. The virtual grounds for all the transmitter coils go through a current-mode switch matrix, that connects none or one transmitter coil current to the primary winding (e.g., a single-turn primary) of a current transformer Tc, while connecting all the remaining transmitter coils to the high-current transmitter-coil common-ground point t. The selected current thus goes through the primary of the current transformer Tc to the ground point t. A suitable current transformer Tc may have a primary-to-secondary turns ratio of about 1:200. It operates to isolate the large transmitter currents from analog ground of the receiver electronics, accurately reducing the transmitter currents to values within the range of the virtual-ground preamp, and minimizing the reflected virtual-ground impedance seen by the transmitter coils.
The mutual-impedance reference is preferably operated at a lower current than the transmitter coils are operated, so the mutual-impedance-reference current is switched in or out (as shown) on the secondary side of the current transformer Tc. Moreover, the secondary of Tc is always in the circuit, to cancel effects due to transformer magnetizing current, so that the magnetizing current then appears as just another constant complex gain error in the current-measurement channel. Such constant gain errors cancel out in data-reduction calculations. In
In operation of the system, magnetic fields generated by the transmitter coils induce voltage signals in the receiver coils, and these are received and sampled to develop raw received signal values for the processing. The voltage-input preamp and ADC channel for one receiver coil L is shown in FIG. 5E. The voltage from the inductor L is applied via a coaxial cable 55 to the differential-voltage-input preamp. The preamp output is applied to the input of an analog to digital converter, such as the above described 24-bit Deltasigma ADC, through a passive lowpass filter. The filter eliminates alias responses as well as effects due to nonlinear ADC input currents. Use of a coaxial cable has the advantageous benefit that external electromagnetic fields can induce no potentials between the center conductor and the shield of the coaxial cable (assuming a perfectly-conducting shield). By contrast, a conventional twisted-pair cable may cancel effects due to uniform applied electromagnetic fields, but can introduce extraneous signals in the presence of gradient fields (such as spatially varying fields) are used in the system.
Thus, in the illustrated embodiment, there is one voltage input channel for each receiver coil, and a channel for the current preamp.
Overall operation 200 of the position sensing system proceeds as shown in FIG. 3. The transmitting x-, y- and z-coils Tx, Ty, Tz are driven to generate magnetic fields, and the voltages induced in the three sensor receiver coils denoted Rx, Ry, Rz are measured. In addition, a reference magnetic field is generated in a calibration coil 10 a coil fixed in or close to the receiving coil assembly. The currents flowing through the transmitting coils and the current flowing through the calibration coil are each measured, and all the signals, including the received voltage signals in each receiver coil, are digitized and passed to a signal processing unit described below more fully in connection with FIG. 4. The ADC sampling is controlled by a common timing generator so that the timing relationship between ADC samples and DAC samples is tightly controlled. A suitable timing module is shown in
These are used in the next stage to form a nine element mutual inductance matrix for all of the (3) transmitter and (3)receiver coil pairs. The matrix is then used to compute coordinates of the receiver coil assembly with respect to the transmitter. The overall approach for the latter computation may be similar to that employed in a conventional field model dipole approach, such as that described in the 1979 paper of F. H. Raab et al. Volume AES-15, No. 5, pp. 709-718, and Frederick H. Raab. Quasi-static Magnetic Field Technique for Determining Position and Orientation. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. GE-19 (4): 235-243, October 1981. For computation of position and orientation coordinates, the processing preferably proceeds by starting with an initial estimate of the six position and orientation coordinates, applying those coordinates to compute a mutual inductance matrix, and iteratively refining the coordinate estimate to enhance the goodness of fit between the mutual inductance values as measured, and those predicted from the estimate.
As discussed further below, various features of the processing make the mutual inductance model highly accurate and not prone to errors of scale or position. Moreover since direct solutions are possible, the iteration proceeds quickly so that the position and orientation coordinates may be output based on the estimated coordinates and measured mutual inductance matrix. Appendix A attached hereto illustrates a suitable calculation for deriving an initial set of position and orientation coordinates from a measured set of dipole-modeled mutual inductances Ltr of the transmitter/receiver coil pairs. The dimensions of the coils are assumed to be small compared to their separation, allowing derivation, for example, as described in the paper of Frederick H. Raab. Quasi-static Magnetic Field Technique for Determining Position and Orientation. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. GE-19 (4): 235-243, October 1981. Mutual inductances may be calculated for dipole coils or for circuits comprised of straight line segments as outlined in Appendix B and Appendix C. Each of the foregoing appendices is hereby incorporated herein by reference and made a part of this description.
In general, the mutual impedance measuring system is designed for measurement of small mutual impedances at frequencies between 100 Hz and 40 kHz, and preferably between about 10 kHz and 15 kHz. The reference impedance Zref may be a 10 ohm�100 ppm four-terminal resistor, so that Zref is real and independent of frequency at the frequencies of interest. The whole system is ratiometric: the mutual impedances are measured with respect to Zref so that no precision voltage or current references are required. Moreover, the frequency responses of the receiver measuring channel and the current measuring channel are the same, so that factors of the complex gains that vary with frequency will cancel in the ratioing process. Similarly, frequency-independent complex gain factors of the receiver measuring channels will also cancel in the determining the ratio of mutual impedances to Zref.
Overall, the system operates by converting the raw signal measurements as discussed above to a mutual inductance matrix, and then solving for position and orientation (P&O) from the mutual inductance.
The first step to computing P&O is converting sum-of-products (SOP) data into a normalized raw signal matrix (RSM) of mutual inductances. The SOP data is processed to preserve phase information, so there is a real and an imaginary component of each parameter. The unnormalized matrix has these complex entries., while , the mutual inductance matrix consists solely of real numbers. As discussed above, it is the end result of normalizing a complex signal matrix (CSM) for the effects of current, coil and calibration coil response. The goal of this step is to end up with a 3�3 matrix containing the mutual inductances between all possible combinations of sensor and transmitter coils. Because there are three sensor and three transmitter coils, there are a total of nine elements in the signal matrix. Each row of the matrix corresponds to a sensor coil and each column to a transmitter coil.
The RSM is computed by performing a series of matrix multiplication operations. The effects of transmitter current are normalized out (because the B field is directly proportional to the current through the transmitter), as are the effects of frequency (db/dt) and receiver channel gain (using the calibration coil response matrices). The formula is shown below:
The above mutual inductance matrix is then applied to determine the position and orientation coordinates of the coil assembly. This operation proceeds by first obtaining a good estimate of P&O, for example, by using the direct dipole solution of the Raab paper cited above (which may be augmented to correct for coil size and known field disturbances). The processor first factors out the effects of gain & non-orthogonality of both the receiver and transmitter coils. This may be done by pre-multiplying the RSM by the receiver gain matrix inverse, and post-multiplying by the inverse of the transmitter gain matrix. Detailed mathematical derivation of this method is given in the attached Appendix A.
where R is now a 3�3 matrix where the effects of receiver and transmitter gain and non-orthogonalities have been removed. One can now estimate the range, r, (the square root of x2+y2+z2) and the magnitude of the x,y,z coordinates based on the square of the total field from the three transmitter coils.
Because of the hemispherical ambiguity associated with the tracker, the processor may always assume it is operating in the +X hemisphere, and simply take dot products between sensor output vectors (the rows in a transposed signal matrix) to determine the sign of y and z.
However, the solution is unstable if any of the coordinate values is close to zero. (See Appendix A). To correct for this, the processor preferably mathematically rotates the signal matrix elements to move the solution into an optimal (non-zero) region which herein refers to a region in which the numerical coordinate values are substantially non-vanishing such that a stable solution of the coordinate values can be obtained by utilizing the above methodology The rotation is determined by computing the quaternion effective to move the initial position estimate to an "ideal" solution location where x=y=z (i.e., away from the x, y and z axes). This ensures that the solution is numerically accurate and stable. The processor then recalculates equations (1)-(4) with the rotated R matrix. After determining these "rotated" position coordinates, the processor de-rotates with the inverse quaternion to obtain a better estimate of the true position. Again, dot products are employed to determine the sign of the coordinates.
The r, x ,y and z values are then used to compute 3�3 matrices Tα, Tβ and their inverses. The matrices Tα, Tβ are rotation matrices built from the (positional) spherical coordinates angles, α, β, respectively. Note, however, that because
The elements of A may be used to find a rotation quaternion, 'q', using the procedure in Appendix A8 of the paper of B. Horn, Closed-form solution of absolute orientation using unit quaternions, J. Opt Soc. Amer. Vol 4. p 629, April, 1987. Note, however, that here A is the inverse of the rotation matrix described in that paper.
The foregoing procedure provides a very good estimate for the position and orientation of the sensor. To refine the estimate of position and orientation, the processor next applies a fitting, such as a first-order or least square algorithm, to create a best-fit between a set of model estimated mutual inductances and the measured mutual inductances in the RSM. The idea is to compute a set of small correction values to apply to the estimated P&O. The basic equation is:
The fourth component of the delta quaternion, Δqs, may be solved for by normalizing it to unit length.
Note that because the matrix S is not square, it cannot be inverted. However, to put it into an invertible form, one can multiply it by its transpose (ST). See, for example, W. Brognan. Modern Control Theory. Prentice-Hall, 1991, pp 222-223. The least squares equation we end up with is:
Thus, the processor operating with SOP data from the magnetic tracking units computes and refine the position and orientation of the movable coil assembly.
As noted above, certain structures present in the tracking arena may introduce field distortions because eddy currents induced in conductive structures will themselves generate magnetic fields. In accordance with other aspects of the invention, this problem is addressed in one or more of several ways.
One of these ways is to mount the receiver (sensor) of the system on or close to a major interfering structure, such as (in a medical context) the C arm of a fluoroscope assembly. The transmitter coil assembly is then the movable assembly of the tracker, and will thus be generally positioned remotely from the interfering structure. The mutual inductance tracker of the invention can be configured to operate effectively with small coils which may be carried by a hand-held tool and the like, thereby rendering the above approach feasible. Further, the use of mutual inductance between the transmitter and receiver units in the electromagnetic tracker of the invention allows swapping the functionality of the transmitter and receiver units, e.g., utilizing a nominal sensor coil as a transmitter and/or a nominal transmitter coil as a receiver. This reciprocity can be particularly advantageous because, in some cases, it may be more convenient to map and/or model the field generated by one unit, e.g., receiver, rather than the other, e.g., transmitter.
Another aspect of the invention dealing with the field disturbance problem is to mount a standardized conductor about such an interfering structure to operate as a shield (e.g., with respect to disturbances originating within the shield) and a known disturber, as seen by a sensor positioned outside the shield. The standardized conductor, such as a metal can, then has a fixed position relative to one of the coil assemblies, and may be effectively modeled. Thus, the eddy currents induced in the sheet metal cylinder by the magnetic field from the transmitter assembly, and the secondary B field formed by these induced currents, may be modeled such that the processor can apply determinable field contributions from the shield. Without such a shield, applicant has found that when a coil assembly is employed in proximity to certain interfering structures (such as the imaging assembly of a fluoroscope), the disturbance caused by that structure may vary considerably for two different but apparently identical units. The shield moderates such differences; electromagnetic fields originating within the shield are largely null outside the shield. Moreover, little of the tracking signal origination outside the shield penetrates inside, so that the level of eddy currents induced in the structural conductive elements inside the shield are subject only to quite low fields and their eddy currents and secondary field effects are greatly diminished. These combined effects allow a tracking system to operate effectively by applying standardized (modeled or calibrated) corrections for the shield alone, without regard to the specific structure(such as a fluoroscope imaging assembly) that it isolates.
Preferably, the shield is made of a single piece of a highly conducting material, e.g., a metal such as silver, copper or aluminum, or a conductive composite. The shield surrounds the targeted component or piece of interfering equipment, such as the image intensifier assembly of a fluoroscope, as much as possible, consistent with system constraints (e.g., X-ray transparency of the top end, mechanical protrusion limits for camera movement, etc.). Preferably, the shield thickness is sufficient, e.g., more than the skin depth of the metal or more than several skin depths, so that the magnetic field it generates will not appreciably penetrate the shield or extend into the volume behind the shield.
The field distortions introduced by the shield may be mapped and a tracker-correction table may be generated in a preliminary set-up or calibration step, or the effect of the shield may be modeled.
The shield greatly reduces the magnitude of equipment-related magnetic field distortion reaching the targeted structure, and introduces its own, highly determined effects. Thus, as applied, for example to a fluoroscope, changing the image intensifier has no appreciable effect on the resulting field distortion, and one field distortion correction table can be used for all image intensifiers of a given model, and sometimes even for image intensifiers of different models.
As will be understood by those having ordinary skill in the art, fluoroscopes typically operate with the x-ray source 22 positioned opposite the camera or image sensing assembly 24. While in some systems, the X-ray source is fixed overhead, and the camera is located below a patient support, the discussion below will be illustrated with regard to the more complex case of a typical C-arm fluoroscope, in which the source and camera are connected by a structural member, the C-arm 26, that allows movement of the source and camera assembly about the patient so it may be positioned to produce x-ray views from different angles or perspectives. In these devices, the imaging beam generally diverges at an angle, the relative locations and orientations of the source and camera vary with position due to structural flexing and mechanical looseness, and the position of both the source and the camera with respect to the patient and/or a tool which it is desired to track may all vary in different shots. Thus, the use of one or more tracking elements T3 (transmitters or receivers) on the structure itself may be useful to quantify these movements in the surgical navigation system. Further details of this complex imaging environment may be found in commonly owned U.S. patent applications Ser. Nos. 09/560,940 and 09/560,608, both filed on Apr. 28, 2000, and each of which is incorporated herein by reference. Each of those patent applications discloses a tracking system wherein tracking of the fluoroscope as well as the tool and patient produce image sets and surgical navigation of enhanced accuracy.
The imaging beam illustrated by B in
As further shown in
As discussed above, in a tracker of the invention, a shield may be modeled in the processor, so that a more accurate model of the magnetic field data is present initially, either obviating or reducing the task of actually mapping the disturbed field measurements. When the processor determines position and orientation components by refining an iterative estimation or fitting procedure, for example wherein the system estimates the coordinates of a transmitter or sensor unit, or the relative coordinates by comparing calculated signal measurements with measured signal values, such modeling may produce faster and less computationally intensive convergence of the fitting procedure. Thus, for example, a cylindrical "can" fitted about the imaging assembly of a fluoroscope may be effectively modeled as a conductive ring or annulus at the defined position. This may produce a kernel or an initial seed solution without resorting to massive stored field calibration tables, or may yield a fast or even closed form calculation of the field distribution for P&O determination. A traditional approach to the design of electromagnetic trackers set forth, for example, in the 1981 paper of F. H. Raab, supra, assumes magnetic dipole field distributions for both the transmitting and sensing coils. This assumption permits an analytic solution for position and orientation coordinates (hereinafter, simply "P&O") based on the measured sensor data. However, in cases where the actual fields deviate from the dipole form, application of a dipole-based algorithm produces distorted P&O estimates. Such deviations occur, for instance, when coil sizes are significant relative to the source-sensor separation distance, or when conducting or magnetic materials are located near the sensors. (The term sensor is used herein to refer to both transmitting and receiving coils unless specifically noted). An analytic solution for P&O is not generally possible for non-dipole field models, so in order to continue to use this formalism in the presence of real fields, a typical approach has been to correct the P&O estimates from the dipole algorithm using a large lookup table containing measured values of the distortion over the working volume, as described in Zachman, G. Distortion Correction of Magnetic Fields for Position Tracking. Proc. Computer Graphics Int'l (CGI'97), Jun. 23-27, 1997, Hasselt & Diepenbeek, Belgium.
However, in accordance with another aspect of the present invention, rather than proceeding by creating a distortion map for every application, a system implements a P&O determination based on a more accurate model of the sensor field (for example, modeling the extrinsic distortion) that eliminates the need for a map by curing the distortion problem at its source.
Numerical models (e.g., finite element methods) can be made arbitrarily accurate, but the computational cost for this accuracy may become quite high. As an alternative, a given source may be approximated as a collection of simple shapes for which the fields can be expressed analytically. This approach provides a compromise between accuracy and speed, where the accuracy will be limited by the ability to match the actual geometry with a set of simple shapes, which determine the "basic functions" for the expansion.
This approach has been applied in a further aspect of the invention to a fluoroscopic tracking system where the sensor is mounted close to a large parasitic element, namely the C-arm of a fluoroscope. In this case, a distorter element, for example, in the form of a large metal can is preferably mounted on the C-arm image intensifier to dominate the field distortion. The sensor fields are then modeled as a three-axis dipole located near a filamentary conducting ring. The fields of both a dipole and filamentary ring can be computed analytically (see, for example, Smythe, W R. Static and Dynamic Electricity. Hemisphere Publishing, New York, 1989. A composite model of the coupling matrix components can therefore be written as the sum of analytic expressions. The following sections describe the model in detail.
To embed the new field model in the tracker fit routine, one needs a way to compute the coupling matrix between the transmitter and receiver in the presence of the distortion source. To accomplish this, applicant makes two assumptions:
The voltage induced on a receive coil due to a current flowing on a transmit coil in the presence of a metal-ring can be computed by considering the system as a three-port network, as schematically shown in FIG. 7.
The impedance parameters describing the coupling among the ports are given by:
(See, e.g., Pozar, D M. Microwave Engineering. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass., 1990.)
Consider the case where we want to know the voltage induced on port 2 (the receiver) when port 1 (the transmitter) is driven with a fixed voltage, port 2 is loaded with an impedance Of ZL, and port 3 (the ring) is loaded with a short circuit. After some algebra, we can write the induced voltage on port 2 relative to the current through port I as:
If we assume that ZL is "large" relative to the other terms in the second set of brackets, and that the resistance of the ring is negligible, Equation 5 reduces to:
This approximation is sufficient for many cases, and the full expression in (5) can be implemented where the additional accuracy is required.
To calculate the mutual inductance between the transmitting or receiving coils and the ring, we apply reciprocity and let the ring act as the source for both cases. By first calculating the field radiated by a current flowing on the ring, the voltage induced at the transmit or receive coil is given by a simple dot product. Under the magneto-static approximation, the B-field produced by a uniform current I flowing on a filamentary ring (
Equation 5 requires the computation of one self inductance term and three mutual inductance terms (additional terms must be calculated for Equation 6, which makes no approximations).
The self-inductance term is for the ring, and is given by [7]
The mutual inductance L12 between the transmitting and receiving coils is derived in [10] using the dipole assumption, and can be calculated as
Given a position and orientation of the sensor relative to the transmitter, the range R can be calculated. The effective area terms are calculated based on the coil geometry and a calibration procedure [11].
The remaining two mutual inductance terms, those between the transmitting coil and the ring, and between the receiving coil and the ring, may be calculated in a similar manner.
The position and orientation of the ring relative to the sensor coils is assumed to be known and fixed. Therefore, to compute the mutual inductance L23 in Equation 6, first compute the P&O of the sensor in the coordinate frame of the ring shown in FIG. 8. Next, compute the magnetic field per unit current produced by the ring at the sensor location. Finally, the mutual inductance term is calculated for each sensor coil by taking the dot product between the coil vector and the field, using the point source property of the dipole approximation.
Computing the mutual inductance between the transmitter and the ring requires one additional step. Given the P&O of the sensor in the transmitter coordinate system, we first convert so that we have the P&O of the transmitter in the sensor coordinate frame. The procedure then proceeds as above. The mutual inductance L13 is computed by calculating the P&O of the transmitter in the ring coordinate system. The relationship between the ring and the sensor is known and fixed as noted above, so once the transmitter P&O is known relative to the sensor, conversion transformations are obvious. Next compute the magnetic field per unit current produced by the ring at the sensor location. Finally, the mutual inductance term is calculated for each sensor coil by taking the dot product between the coil vector and the field, using the point source property of the dipole approximation.
With all of the inductance terms available, Equation 6 is then readily calculated. Overall, the approach of measuring mutual inductances allows the system to develop robust measurements in which reliance on references such as Zref or a signal ratio, or use of a common preamplifier with high precision output digitization, have eliminated numerous sources of variability while allowing effective use of small magnetic assemblies to achieve accuracy and resolution.
Moreover, by introducing a shield or virtual distorter and fixing a receiver assembly with respect to the shield, the effects of individual distortion environments are substantially eliminated, and the shield itself may be effectively modeled, eliminating the cumbersome requirement of compiling a mapping or calibration table. The model may then produce a seed calculation, allowing computationally effective fitting processes to replace the cumbersome calculations of the prior art. In other words, a distorter that is shaped to optimally shield magnetic fields from existing environmental distorters can be utilized without any regard for a specific desired field shape. The shield's effect on the field can then be modeled, or alternatively, mapped.
The invention being thus disclosed and illustrative embodiments depicted herein, further variations and modifications of the invention will occur to those skilled in the art, and all such variations and modifications are considered to be within the scope of the invention, as defined by the claims appended hereto and equivalents thereof.
Here, we derive the mutual inductance between two magnetic dipole coils:
Each dipole is replaced by a small but finite-sized single-turn square coil. Each coil is shrunk to an infinitesimal size (while increasing its number of turns to infinity) to obtain the dipole limit. In the dipole limit, the shape of the coil does not matter. The coil's properties are described by the coil's effective area, the product of the coil's geometrical area and number of turns.
The mutual inductance, Lm, between two closed circuits is given by Neuman's formula:
Here, we consider the case where each circuit is composed of four straight-line segment's.
Define some quantities:
Use the �, {circumflex over (v)}, � cartesian coordinate system, where dipole A is at the origin and dipole B is at {overscore (R)}=R{circumflex over (r)}=u�+v{circumflex over (v)}+a�.
The four corners of coil A are:
Note that the ratio of the effective area of dipole A to the effective area of coil A is A/h2.
A point on coil A is given by:
The four corners of coil B are:
Note that the ratio of the effective area of dipole B to the effective area of coil B is B/h2.
A point on coil B is given by:
The distance from a point on coil A to a point on coil B is:
Expand the integral around circuit B in equation A.2 by explicitly going around circuit B from point {overscore (B4)} through points {overscore (B1)}, {overscore (B2)}, {overscore (B3)}, and back to point {overscore (B4)}:
Define g to he the inverse of the distance from a point on coil A to a point on coil B:
Calculate some directional partial derivatives along the {circumflex over (p)} and {circumflex over (q)} axes, remembering that {overscore (sA)} is independent of p and q:
Set ε=h, and substitute into equation A.3:
Perform the integration over b:
Expand the integral around circuit A in equation A.10 by explicitly going around circuit A from point {overscore (A4)} through points {overscore (A1)}, {overscore (A2)}, {overscore (A3)}, and back to point {overscore (A4)}:
Rearrange to separate the four dotproducts:
Apply the definition of a partial derivative and the fact that h is small to equations A.17, A.18, A.19, and A.20:
Recall that g is:
Substitute into equation A.16:
Calculate g in equation A.30 and its partial derivatives in the �, {circumflex over (v)}, � cartesian coordinate system, where dipole A is at the origin and dipole B is at {overscore (R)}=R{circumflex over (r)}=u�+v{circumflex over (v)}+a�:
Substitute into equation A.30:
Expand F:
Rearrange terms:
Eliminate cancelling terms at end:
Insert new cancelling terms at end:
Since �=��{circumflex over (v)} and {circumflex over (b)}={circumflex over (p)}�{circumflex over (q)}, we have:
Apply this equality in the u2 and v2 terms in F:
Rearrange terms:
Recall that R2=u2+v2+a2, and substitute for last three terms:
Since �=��{circumflex over (v)} and {circumflex over (b)}={circumflex over (p)}�{circumflex over (q)}, we have:
Substitute F and T into equation A.31:
Simplify to get result A.1:
We can write equation A.33 using a dyadic operator:
If the vectors �, {circumflex over (b)}, and {circumflex over (r)} are three-element row vectors, then the dyadic operator D can be written as a 3�3 matrix, and the dot products are matrix multiplies:
Given the dipole model of mutual inductances Ltr as functions of position {overscore (R)} and orientation O, we calculate {overscore (R)} and O in terms of Ltr.
To use the result as a P&O algorithm seed, we calculate estimated values of {overscore (R)} and O from measured values of Ltr.
We make the dipole approximation, that the dimensions of each coil are small compared to the distance between coils.
We have three equal-effective-area colocated orthogonal dipole transmitter coils and three equal-effective area colocated orthogonal dipole receiver coils. We derived the mutual inductance of two dipoles in Appendix A, so we start with a 3�3 mutual-inductance matrix:
The transmitter effective area vector {overscore (At)} is:
The receiver effective area vector {overscore (Ar)} is:
Define the cartesian coordinate system:
The receiver position vector {overscore (R)} is independent of t and r, and has cartesian coordinates Rx, Ry, and Rz:
We have three transmitter dipoles, 0, 1 and 2, which are centered on the origin, orthogonal to each other, all the same effective area At, and pointing along the X, Y, and Z axes respectively:
When t=0, {circumflex over (t)}={circumflex over (X)}.
When t=1, {circumflex over (t)}=Ŷ.
When t=2, {circumflex over (t)}={circumflex over (Z)}.
Define a rotated Cartesian coordinate system for the receiver dipoles, to represent the receiver orientation:
We represent the receiver orientation as a normalized rotation quaternion O. Then we calculate {circumflex over (X)}r, Ŷr, and {circumflex over (Z)}r by representating each vector as a pure-imaginary quaternion (O′ is the quaternion complement of O):
We have three receiver dipoles, 0, 1 and 2, which are centered on the point R, orthogonal to each other, all the same effective area Ar, and pointing along the Xr, Yr, and Zr axes respectively:
When r=0, {circumflex over (r)}={circumflex over (X)}r.
When r=1, {circumflex over (r)}=Ŷr.
When r=2, {circumflex over (r)}={circumflex over (Z)}r.
Define K, which is independent of {overscore (R)}, O, and Ltr:
Now B.1 becomes:
Lt 2 is independent, of O. We use this fact to solve for {overscore (R)}.
From B.2, the square of the mutual inductance of one transmitter dipole and one receiver dipole is:
Then, the sum of the squares of the mutual inductances of one transmitter dipole and the three receiver dipoles, is:
For transmitter coil 0:
For transmitter coil 1:
For transmitter coil 2:
The sum of the squares of all nine mutual inductances is then:
Solve B.8 for R:
Solve B.5, B.6, and B.7 for Rx2, Ry2 and Rz2 respectively, and use B.8 and B.9 to eliminate R:
Now we take the square roots of these three quantities:
The signs of Rx, Ry, and Rz are determined from the signs of products of the mutual inductances.
Due to the symmetries of the fields, positions {overscore (+R)} and {overscore (−R)}, for the same orientation O, give the same mutual inductances, and cannot be distinguished by calculation. In the literature, this is called the hemisphere ambiguity.
To resolve this ambiguity, we choose to use the +X hemisphere, where Rx is always positive.
Form sums of products of mutual inductances Ltr:
Recall that the signum or sign function is defined to be:
Then the signs of Rx, Ry, and Rz are given by:
Then the position {overscore (R)} cartesian components are calculated in terms of the mutual inductances Ltr by:
As Rx, Ry, and/or Rz approach zero, B.16 and/or B.17 become numerically unstable due to small mutual inductances, and B.22, B.23, and B.24 become numerically unstable due to the square roots: Errors in the mutual inductances can cause large errors, wrong signs, or even cause a close-to-zero result to become imaginary.
Since the transmitters are colocated dipoles, and colocated dipole moments combine the same way vectors do, synthetic mutual-inductance matrices can be calculated for transmitter dipole triads with other orientations than along the X, Y, and Z axes. This solves the numerical instability of the above solution.
If the calculated position is close to the X, Y, or Z axis (and hence is numerically unstable), we can: mathematically rotate the coordinate system to move the position far from the axes, calculate the position in the rotated coordinate system (this calculation is numerically stable), then derotate the result to the original coordinate system.
In detail, the rotate, calculate, derotate algorithm is as follows:
Calculate unrotated position {overscore (Ru)}=(Rx u, Ry u, Rz u) by substituting the measured mutual inductances Ltr in B.22, B.23, and B.24:
If any of Rx u, Ry u, or Rz u come out imaginary, make that value or those values zero.
Note that the sign for a small-value Rx u, Ry u, or Rz u may be wrong, but this causes only a small position error, which error will be removed in following steps.
Calculate a unit vector {circumflex over (R)}u in the direction of {overscore (Ru)}:
We next calculate a unit vector Ŝu in the (sgn(Rx u), sgn(Ry u), sgn(Rx u)) direction:
Note that Su is far from the X, Y, and Z axes, and is always in the +X hemisphere.
Note that our choice of Ŝu means that the dot product {circumflex over (R)}u�Ŝu can never be negative.
Note that {circumflex over (R)}u�Ŝu analytically can never be greater than unity. Numerical errors can result in a value slightly greater than unity, but such errors do no harm here.
If {circumflex over (R)}u�Ŝu is greater than or equal to some threshold (we use 0.9 to 0.95), then the position estimate is numerically stable enough to be accurate, so the position is given by:
If the dot product is less than the threshold, then the position estimate is numerically unreliable, and we must improve the numerical stability. We do this by recalculating the position in a rotated coordinate system, and then derotating the position back to the original coordinate system.
We choose to rotate {circumflex over (R)}u into Ŝu. Note that the rotated position vector will be far from the X, Y, and Z axes, even if the recalculation changes the position a little.
We could use any of various vector-rotation formalisms. We choose to use normalized rotation quaternions for their numerical stability and lack of singularities.
The angle between {circumflex over (R)}u and Ŝu is:
The normalized rotation quaternion to rotate {circumflex over (R)}u into Ŝu is:
Equation B.31 is numerically unstable when {circumflex over (R)}u and Ŝu point in close to opposite directions, i.e. when
We treat the 3�3 matrix of mutual inductances, Ltr, in B.2 as a trio of column (transposed row) vectors, one for each receiver coil, where the superscript t indicates the transpose operation:
To rotate the transmitter coordinates, we apply the rotation U to each of the three row vectors in B.33:
The rotated mutual-inductance matrix is:
Calculate rotated position {overscore (Rr)}=(Rx r, Ry r, Rz r) by substituting the rotated mutual inductances Ltr r in B.18 through B.24:
None of Rx r, Ry r, Rz r will be small, imaginary, or otherwise numerically unstable, as the rotated position is far from the axes.
Derotate the position:
We now have an accurate position estimate {overscore (R)} from B.30 or B.45.
Note that we imposed the +X hemisphere restriction to force Rx to he positive, but numerical effects may generate Rx which is slightly negative. If Rx is negative, it will be only by a value within the errors due to errors in Ltr. Physically, this happens only when the physical X position is zero, putting the position on the hemisphere boundary.
We now determine an estimate for orientation. Recall that the receiver coil axes are defined by:
When r=0, {circumflex over (r)}={circumflex over (X)}r.
When r=1, {circumflex over (r)}=Ŷr.
When r=2, {circumflex over (r)}={circumflex over (Z)}r.
At zero orientation, the three receiver coil axes are aligned with the coordinate system axes:
When r=0, {circumflex over (r)}0={circumflex over (X)}.
When r=1, {circumflex over (r)}0=Ŷ.
When r=2, {circumflex over (r)}0={circumflex over (Z)}.
We represented the orientation as a normalized rotation quaternion O:
We can also represent the orientation as an orthonormal rotation matrix O, remembering that the vectors are row vectors:
Equations B.49, B.50, and B.51 can be combined into one matrix equation, where the superscript t indicates the transpose of a vector or matrix:
For most orientation calculations, the rotation-matrix representation is undesireable: Rotation matrices can easily become non-orthonormal, as nine numbers in the matrix encode three degrees of freedom.
However, rotation matrices have one advantage over rotation quaternions: Equation B.52 is easily solved for the rotation matrix, where the superscript −1 indicates the inverse of a matrix:
Substituting the zero-orientation receiver unit vectors in B.2 gives Ltr 0, the mutual-inductance matrix at position {overscore (R)} for zero orientation:
In B.2 and B.54, the three mutual inductances for each receiver coil form a column vector, analogous to the column vectors in B.52. The measured mutual inductances, Ltr, thus differ from Ltr 0 by the the receiver rotation:
Solve B.55 for O:
Ideally, O is an orthonormal rotation matrix describing the receiver rotation. Measurement errors and field nonidealities can easily make O deviate from orthonormality.
If matrix O is not orthonormal, we cannot convert O exactly to a rotation quaternion O. The best we can do, is to convert to a best-fit quaternion in the least-squares sense, as described by an article entitled "Closed-form solution of absolute orientation using unit quaternions", by Berthold K. P. Horn, published in "Journal of the Optical Society of America", volume 4, April, 1987, pages 629ff, herein incorporated by reference.
The mutual inductance, Lm, between two closed circuits is given by Neuman's formula:
Here, we consider the case where both circuits are composed of straight-line segments.
Circuit A is composed of segments A1 . . . An.
Circuit B is composed of segments B1 . . . Bm.
Then C.1 becomes:
The integral over Ak can be evaluated analytically:
Equation C.3 is easily evaluated numerically by well-known numerical integration methods.
Equation C.3 combines two forms, which integrate in opposite directions along segment Ak. The two forms are combined because each form has a region of potential numerical instability due to a zero denominator.
The first region of numerical instability occurs when {overscore (ss)} and {overscore (sb)} approach being parallel. In this region, {overscore (ss)}�{overscore (sb)}>0, and 1−ct approaches zero. When {overscore (ss)} and {overscore (sb)} become exactly parallel, 1−ct=0 exactly. In this region, we choose sg=+1 to avoid a zero denominator in the integral in equation C.3.
The second region of numerical instability occurs when {overscore (ss)} and {overscore (sb)} approach being antiparallel. In this region, {overscore (ss)}�{overscore (sb)}<0, and 1+ct approaches zero. When {overscore (ss)} and {overscore (sb)} become exactly parallel, 1+ct=0 exactly. In this region, we choose sg=−1 to avoid a zero denominator in the integral in equation C.3.
To derive equation C.3, start with the term in equation C.1 for one pair of current segments:
Current segments Ak and Bl are both straight lines, so it is natural to describe them in linear terms of dimensionless variables a and b respectively, where
We integrate over a symbolically first, so we will keep dependencies on a explicit. Dependencies on b are absorbed into quantities independent of a while we integrate over a.
A point on segment Ak is one of two linear functions of a, depending on sg:
When sg=+1, then {overscore (sA(a))}={overscore (sk finish)}−{overscore (sk)}a
When sg=−1, then {overscore (sA(a))}={overscore (sk start)}−{overscore (sk)}a
A point on segment Bl is a linear function of b:
Now equation C.4 becomes:
Expand the denominator in equation C.5, separate out the coefficient of a2, and remove the sg dependence from the limits of integration:
Define two quantities which do not depend on a:
Note that 0≦β≦2.
Define a new variable x:
Now equation C.6 becomes:
We have for β≧0:
Substitute equation C.8 into equation C.7:
Substitute the definitions of α and β into equation C.9:
Remove a common factor of
Substitute for ct in the last radical in the numerator:
Factor the numerator inside the last radical in the numerator:
Substitute equation C.14 into equation C.4, and that into equation C.2:
This is our result, equation C.3.
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  Here are some detailed instructions on taking the bus to SSL.
  The H line runs every 30 minutes from the Mining Circle (in front of Campbell Hall) to SSL at the :15 and :45 and leaves the SSL on the hour and half hour throughout the day. The H line just does a round trip from SSL to the Mining Circle all day (except beginning and end).
  The H-line bus does appear at the Downtown Berkeley BART station, but only for its first (7:40am) , and last-two runs of the day.
  Otherwise, take the "P" (perimeter..every 12 minutes) or "R" (reverse perimeter..every 25 minutes) bus from the BART station to the Hearst Mining Circle (just across the street North of Campbell Hall) and take the H line from there.
3. The conference room is in the main, new SSL building directly off of the parking lot. The conference
room is just inside the main entrance doors.
Parking permits requested
Caltech 1 (Piran, Nakar, Schmidt, Cameron)
Caltech 2 (Cenko, Fox, Gal-Yam)
Frank Serduke
Kem Cook
Dave DeBoer
Greg Taylor
Weidong Li
Alex Filippenko
Tom Vestrand
Hy Spinrad
Mike Davis
Roger Blandford
Elliott Bloom

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Multiplying Goodness
How can we create abundance in the world?
By Jack Jezreel
April 2012
One of the Lenten season's treasured readings is the story of the loaves and fishes, the only miracle story found in all four Gospels. In it, a few loaves and a couple of fish not only feed thousands of people but there is an overflow of leftovers! It speaks to the kind of abundance that comes with sharing in the life and vision of Jesus. There is some kind of—what shall we call it—sacred multiplier effect going on!
For the last several years, Bread for the World and JustFaith Ministries (JFM) have been exploring together this phenomenon of faith multiplying goodness and creating abundance in the world.
As many of you know, JFM creates resources that are meant to deepen faith, widen prayer, and prompt new commitments on behalf of God's most vulnerable people. Our tagline for many years has been, "JustFaith Ministries changes people; those people change the world, with God's help."
Our version of the loaves and fishes story is that JFM graduates make new commitments to organizations that create hope where there was none, abundance where there had been scarcity, love where there had been neglect, community where there was fear, and possibilities where there was only despair. Stories of authentic change seem to multiply goodness in astounding ways and on an extraordinary scale! Consider how the life of one transformed person can impact the lives of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of others.
Many JustFaith graduates make their way to the invitation and work of Bread because it has so thoughtfully, prayerfully multiplied the capacity of faith to change the world with effective strategies in order to impact the political possibility. What we could not possibly do on our own, we can do together because Bread has gathered, educated, organized, and inspired us!
Over these years of collaboration, JFM is proud to have had a role in inspiring new commitments to Bread and we hope to increase those numbers in the years ahead. So, we invite all Bread members to consider offering one or more of our programs in your church. The typical result is that participants get fired up about the vision of God's justice in the world and want to find an effective way to channel that newfound passion.
So, help us help you! Our only reason for being is to inspire commitments to the work of God's justice and healing. Our aim is to add to the active membership of Bread for the World. Consider hosting one of our introductory workshops or sponsoring one of our programs in your local church or community.
Bread and JFM together invite God's Spirit to inspire, grow, and even multiply a new possibility for this wonderful and wounded world.
Jack Jezreel is executive director of JustFaith Ministries, based in Louisville, KY. For more information, see www.justfaith.org or call (502) 429-0865.


text: Comments by Liberty4all - MLive.com tag:profile.mlive.com,2015:aliceshepard/10166001 2012-05-03T13:15:06Z Movable Type Enterprise 4.29-advance Comment on The Michigan Legislative Prayer Caucus is official; see which lawmakers are part of it tag:www.mlive.com,2015:/politics/index.ssf//3203.20417789 2012-05-03T13:15:06Z 2012-05-03T13:15:06Z It is so interesting that the very people who cut funds to families, public health and public safety are the ones that brag about their Christianity. Look at the list: all but three are slash and burn Republicans. Didn't Jesus aliceshepard Comment on Steve Gunn: Let the people vote on emergency manager law tag:www.mlive.com,2015:/opinion/muskegon/index.ssf//4623.20416370 2012-05-03T11:27:41Z 2012-05-03T11:27:41Z Of course Steve is right and the people should have their say. Every i was dotted, every t crossed. The font was the exact right size. Republicans made up this untrue claim that the font was the wrong size. By aliceshepard Comment on Feminist group honors Muskegon state representative as top legislator tag:www.mlive.com,2015:/news/muskegon/index.ssf//4582.20358825 2012-04-29T13:49:46Z 2012-04-29T13:49:46Z Rep Hovey-Wright is an excellent represntative. She has periodic coffee hours and town hall meetings to connect with ALL constituents. She answers questions and works hard to represent everyone. If there is anyone who deserves special recognition for her work, aliceshepard Comment on Michigan Supreme Court candidates should reveal who's contributing to campaigns - task force tag:www.mlive.com,2015:/politics/index.ssf//3203.20345850 2012-04-28T12:05:42Z 2012-04-28T12:05:42Z I agree with "say no to millages." (Although I don't necessarily agree with his/her name:) aliceshepard Comment on Michigan Supreme Court candidates should reveal who's contributing to campaigns - task force tag:www.mlive.com,2015:/politics/index.ssf//3203.20345844 2012-04-28T12:05:07Z 2012-04-28T12:05:07Z I agree with "say no to millages." (Although I don't necessarily agree with his/her name:) aliceshepard Comment on Do you have any questions for Secretary of State Ruth Johnson? tag:www.mlive.com,2015:/opinion/muskegon/index.ssf//4623.20330188 2012-04-27T14:10:04Z 2012-04-27T14:10:04Z Ruth Johnson has gone to great lengths to solve the problem of "voter fraud." I want her to say exactly how many validated, proven cases of voter fraud in Michigan last year. Be specific. Does she think PA4 petitions should aliceshepard Comment on Pete Hoekstra campaign: Democrats have 'no shame,' while trying to distract voters tag:www.mlive.com,2015:/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf//3625.20329891 2012-04-27T13:56:21Z 2012-04-27T13:56:21Z Let me get this straight. He says it's a nuisance to pay women and men equally when they do the say work, and he says the Dems should have shame?????? UNbelievable. aliceshepard


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Really?? You people think that a parent just happened to have left alcohol in the car?/ Really? I have teenagers and wouldn't dream of leaving a drop of alcohol in the car And if they were going to take 5 kids an hour away -would you have cleaned the car up a bit? teenagers drink! Maybe the driver was responsible and didnt but i bet somebody was drinking. I also thought you couldnt drive with other teenagers in the car in the 1st year you got your license. Sorry for these girls- but alcohol+ teenagers + driving= trouble
What do you have to do to get 1st degree??? More than 20 bones??
If they would quit giving athletic scholarships they wouldnt have to raise as much money.
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Chastain,Affleck & Lawrence to Present on OSCAR's Telecast
Academy Award nominees Ben Affleck, Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence will present on the Oscar telecast, show producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron announced today.
Academy Award-winner Affleck, who is nominated this year for producing the Best Picture nominee "Argo," won the award in 1997 for co-writing the Best Picture nominee "Good Will Hunting."
Chastain, who is nominated for her lead performance in the Best Picture nominee "Zero Dark Thirty," received her first nomination last year for her supporting role in the Best Picture nominee "The Help."
Lawrence, who received her first nomination in 2010 for her leading role in "Winter's Bone," is nominated for her lead performance in the Best Picture nominee "Silver Linings Playbook."
Affleck, Chastain and Lawrence join a stellar list of previously announced Oscar presenters including Halle Berry, Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Mark Wahlberg, Ted and "Marvel's The Avengers" cast members Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner and Mark Ruffalo; returning 2011 Oscar winners Jean Dujardin, Christopher Plummer, Octavia Spencer and Meryl Streep; "Chicago" cast members Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones; special guests Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Daniel Radcliffe, Channing Tatum and Charlize Theron; and performers Adele, Dame Shirley Bassey, Norah Jones and Barbra Streisand.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is the world's preeminent movie-related organization, with a membership of more than 6,000 of the most accomplished men and women working in cinema. In addition to the annual Academy Awards - in which the members vote to select the nominees and winners - the Academy presents a diverse year-round slate of public programs, exhibitions and events; provides financial support to a wide range of other movie-related organizations and endeavors; acts as a neutral advocate in the advancement of motion picture technology; and, through its Margaret Herrick Library and Academy Film Archive, collects, preserves, restores and provides access to movies and items related to their history. Through these and other activities the Academy serves students, historians, the entertainment industry and people everywhere who love movies.
Photo by Carolyn Contino / BEImages
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text:
Lara Stewart
Member since Mar 2012 | 9 Curated Comments, 21 Total
About Me
Freelance copywriter, current events fanatic, sailing addict, craft beer lover and repository of odd facts.
Find Me Online
My Other Website
What I'm Currently Addicted To...
Personal finance blogs.
My Secret Ambition
To learn to play the ukulele. (I guess it's no secret now!)
I'm Known For...
Clean, fast copy; broad knowledge of dozens of topics; a zeal for research; a willingness to take on the most unusual projects.
My Current Project
I never have just one. Right now, I'm building a resource library for an in-home service site, getting ready to edit some video scripts and plugging away on half a dozen business blogs. I love the diversity of my work.
How I Pay For This Wardrobe
Freelance Copywriting
Things That Really Happened
I was associate producer of a wildly unsuccessful late night radio show for 10 weeks.


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We recently added some new features to Google. The most significant is a
summary for each result that highlights where your query matched. This
makes for a much more informative summary than most search engines provide.
You can actually see where your query matched without having to download
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Also, you can fetch contents from our repository by clicking on the
"Cached" link near each result. This often is faster than going to the
original, but of course can give you outdated information since it is based
on our last crawl. This feature can be very useful if the original is not
available or the network is down, you will still have access to the page
(but not the images).
We also made some enhancements to our search code that produce more matches
for many queries, improving performance significantly, we have also done
some more tuning of the ranking functions.
After combining our web server and search engine for better performance, we
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Expect to see a lot of changes in Google in the next few months. We plan
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Commentary: Chip In
Disclosure: What does it mean? Try honesty. Seems hard to be against honesty, to take a stand against integrity. Yet many in the horse business are apparently not in favor of those concepts.
A longtime consignor said he signs tickets as agent because it is nobody's business who he is purchasing horses for. What about who he is selling them for? What about the surgeries the animal has had? What about the places the horse has been domiciled?
The voluntary National Animal Identification System is all about disclosure…and honesty. Yet there is resistance in the equine industry to embrace it.
What is the downside of having an accurate health record of a horse? If you support disclosure, then there is no downside.
The biggest change at auctions in the past 10 years is the addition of repositories, where interested buyers and their veterinary representatives can view films on horses they are interested in bidding on. Why not take that one step further? Wouldn't it make sense to be able to scan a microchip and see every procedure a horse has had prior to a sale? It would if you believe in honesty.
We are, after all, talking about breeding animals.
There are those who argue buyers don't need to know that information because it only confuses them. Well, educate them. Quit believing the only reason to breed a horse is to sell it to someone else.
Pre-sale surgeries didn't keep horses such as Real Quiet and Curlin from becoming classic winners. Disclosure wouldn't have, either.
Microchips merely provide a modern-day paper trail, a method of tracing the history of an animal.
In the last few decades, the Thoroughbred industry has had to deal with numerous communicable diseases, outbreaks, and syndromes, such as contagious equine metritis (CEM), equine viral arteritis (EVA), strangles, mare reproductive loss syndrome (MRLS), hoof and mouth, and West Nile. With horses going from barn to barn, farm to farm, state to state, and country to country, a system to track their movement would be extremely helpful. Immediately, officials could determine the location of exposed horses, helping decide if such things as quarantines are necessary.
Today, more than 20 years after an EVA outbreak in Kentucky, some breeders still feel the release of information came too slowly. In the future, the NAIS would help answer questions should similar situations arise.
There are numerous other uses for microchips and animal identification systems:
The horse industry has always been slow to accept change. Worse yet, many of its members prefer to keep things hidden from others. There is this thought: "What I have done to my horse is nobody's business but my own."
The National Animal Identification System is a good idea, but to accept that premise you must believe in disclosure. And honesty.
Copyright © 2015 The Blood-Horse, Inc. All Rights Reserved.


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Lady Gaga announces 'ARTPOP', new album, app and single
She's been on the mend for quite a while, but Lady Gaga is ready to return to the spotlight. The singer announced on her Facebook page that she has a new album heading to stores in November, but that's not all.
"ARTPOP" will first see a single released on August 19. Then, beginning September 1, fans can preorder the album, as well as the accompanying smartphone app.
In a press release, the app is called "a musical and visual engineering system that combines music, art, fashion, and technology with a new interactive worldwide community." That community has been dubbed "The Auras."
The "ARTPOP" album and app will release on November 11. No other information, including any song names, have been announced yet. Maybe those will be shared when Gaga restarts her Twitter account.
Photo/Video credit: Facebook


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Audio Samples
Album Summary
Notes & Reviews:
This acclaimed Munich production offers a rare opportunity to hear a once popular opera seria from one of the outstanding composers of his day.
The Guardian, 21st February 2013
Iarbas gets the best aria in the entire opera...and Barna-Sabadus delivers it with ravishing control and finely honed technique; it's a real gem that marks the Romanian out as a name to watch...at Naxos's bargain price this is a rarity that's well worth investigating.
International Record Review, May 2013
[Holzhauser] has a strong upper register, her tone is smoothly projected and she phrases eloquently...The silken quality of Barna-Sabadus's voice helps him to ripple through long-breathed roulades...the singing is exquisite...Hofstetter brings all the elements of the work together with admirable results.
MusicWeb International, 9th July 2013
The orchestral playing of the Hofkapelle Mnnchen is lively and colourful, allowing the range of Hasse's orchestration to make its mark.The vocal parts are dominated by high voices... It says much for the performances of the major roles that distinctive personalities are conveyed, and both Theresa Holzhauser as Dido and the counter-tenor Flavio Ferri-Benedetto as Aeneas emerge with great credit.
Recording information: Prinzregententheater, Munich, Germany (05/24/2011-06/01/2011).
ReviewsThere are currently no reviews, be the first one!
Also Purchased
Works DetailsHasse, Johann A. : Didone Abbandonata, opera
- Conductor: Michael Hofstetter
- Ensemble: Hofkapelle Munchen
- Notes: Prinzregententheater, Munich, Germany (05/24/2011-06/01/2011)
- Running Time: 6 min. 13 sec.
- Period Time: Classical
- Form: Opera/Operetta


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Home Thanet News Article
Comedian Lee Evans will be at the Theatre Royal Margate on Sunday, May 18.
The Work in Progress gig gives Lee the chance to test new material in front of a live audience ahead of his nationwide Monsters tour which begins in August and includes six nights at the O2 in London.
The Monsters tour is one of the most anticipated comedy events this year. Viagogo says there have been 27 per cent more searches for Evans than the Monty Python reunion.
Famous for his high-energy performances and record-breaking tours, Evans is one of the world's most successful stand-ups. He has also made his mark in Hollywood, starring in hit films including The Fifth Element, There's Something About Mary and Night at the Museum.
Theatre Royal programme manager Pam Hardiman said: "We are thrilled to be able to bring Lee Evans to the Theatre Royal. This goes to show that Margate really is on the map as one of the best locations for comedy in the South East."
Given the likely demand for tickets to this show, management at the venue have decided to run a ballot.
The only way to get a ticket for this event is by registering at www.theatreroyalmargate.com, or you can register for the ballot in person at Margate Winter Gardens box office.
The ballot will ensure that existing Friends of Margate Theatres and Thanet residents get priority in the ticket allocation.
Extra measures to prevent tickets being sold for profit will be in place, including no online sales, tickets only being available for collection on the day of the event and attendees must have photo ID and matching credit/debit card used to purchase the tickets.
Tickets seen to be sold online will be cancelled. Full terms and conditions of the ballot can be found on the Theatre Royal Margate website.
Ballot registration is open until 5pm Friday, March 21. Tickets will cost £25.
Click here for more news from Thanet.
Click here for more news from around the county.