Image-guided Interventions (IGT) have shown a huge potential to improve medical procedures or even allow for new treatment options. Most ultrasound(US)-based IGT systems use electromagnetic (EM) tracking for localizing US probes and instruments. However, EM tracking is not always reliable in clinical settings because the EM field can be disturbed by medical equipment. So far, most researchers usedand studied commercial EM trackers with their IGT systems which in
turn limited the possibilities to customize the trackers in order minimize distortions and make the systems robust for clinical use. In light
of current good scientific practice initiatives that increasingly request research to publish the source code corresponding to a paper the aim of
this work was to test the feasibility of using the open-source EM tracker
Anser EMT for localizing US probes in a clinical US suite for the first
time. The standardized protocol of Hummel et al. yielded a jitter error of
0.1 ± 0.1 mm and a position error of 1.1 ± 0.7 mm, which is comparable
to 0.1 mm jitter and 1.0 mm position error of a commercial tracker (NDI
Aurora) in the same environment. The rotation error of Anser EMT was
0.15±0.16 degrees, which is lower than at least 0.4 degrees for the commercial tracker. We consider tracked US as feasible with the Anser EMT system if an accuracy of 1-2 mm is sufficient for a specific application.