Image Guided Surgery

Image-guided technology provides surgeons with intra-operative anatomical images of patients, which can help the surgeons decide the best location for incisions, optimal path to the target area, and the critical structures along the path. Due to the minimally invasive nature and the required accuracy, image-guided technology has been widely applied to brain tumor biopsies, spinal surgery, breast cancer biopsy and other surgical applications. We have applied ultrasound guidance in cryo-surgery of the prostate.We are also in the process of developing image-guided techniques to medialization laryngoplasty.

The biggest obstacles come from (1) registering the geometry of the patient registering the geometry of the patient during the surgery to the pre-operative 3D CT data (2) presenting this additional visualization to the surgeon with minimal intrusion or modifications to the current surgical practices and (3) implementing with only a moderate increase in the requirement for additional equipment.