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O U T P AT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | M AY 2 0 1 4
A
new surgical
navigation
system that
uses images from an
ordinary mobile C-
arm provides more
accurate results and
more efficient opera-
tion than current
state-of-the-art
image-guidance sys-
tems, say
researchers. The
innovative comput-
erized orientation
process could improve precision and patient safety in a wide range of
minimally invasive procedures, particularly spine surgery and neuro-
surgery, write the Johns Hopkins University engineers in a recent
issue of the journal Physics in Medicine and Biology.
Setting up a conventional image-guidance system for use during sur-
gery necessitates a laborious process known as registration, the corre-
spondence of points on a patient's body to those appearing in a pre-op
CT image that lets the system orient its images.
"The registration process can be error-prone, require multiple manu-
al attempts to achieve high accuracy and tends to degrade over the
course of the operation," says Jeffrey Siewerdsen, PhD, a professor of
biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins.
A New Twist on Image-Guided Surgery
The standard C-arm could revolutionize surgical navigation.
PRODUCT
News
ON TARGET Graduate stu-
dent Ali Uneri demonstrates
the new surgical guidance
system, which uses images
from a mobile C-arm.
Johns
Hopkins
Medicine
Great ideas for your OR
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