We propose a topological mapping and localization system able to operate on real human colonoscopies, despite significant shape and illumination changes. The map is a graph where each node codes a colon location by a set of real images, while edges represent traversability between nodes. For close-in-time images, where scene changes are minor, place recognition can be successfully managed with the recent transformers-based local feature matching algorithms. However, under long-term changes -- such as different colonoscopies of the same patient -- feature-based matching fails. To address this, we train on real colonoscopies a deep global descriptor achieving high recall with significant changes in the scene. The addition of a Bayesian filter boosts the accuracy of long-term place recognition, enabling relocalization in a previously built map. Our experiments show that ColonMapper is able to autonomously build a map and localize against it in two important use cases: localization within the same colonoscopy or within different colonoscopies of the same patient. Code: https://github.com/jmorlana/ColonMapper.
@article{arxiv.2305.05546,
title = {ColonMapper: topological mapping and localization for colonoscopy},
author = {Javier Morlana and Juan D. Tardós and J. M. M. Montiel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.05546},
year = {2024}
}