7D Surgical’s Machine-Vision Image Guidance for Cranial Surgery FDA Cleared

7D Surgical out of Toronto, Canada won FDA approval to introduce its Machine-vision Image Guided Surgery (MvIGS) system for cranial surgery. The system uses cameras and computer vision algorithms to map the external anatomy without requiring any markers to be placed on the body. Typically, fiducial markers are placed on the skin that identify specific spots that are  later used to keep track of where surgical instruments are in relation to the patient’s body during navigation.

The 7D Surgical system essentially creates virtual markers with the help of a registration instrument that has small tooling balls on them. The system’s cameras look at the balls and the computer calculates where the tip of the registration instrument is. Once the tip is positioned, the surgeon simply pushes a foot pedal to define the new location. The whole process takes only a few minutes, saving lots of time compared to systems that can take as long as thirty minutes to do the same.

Here’s a short promo video for 7D Surgical followed by a demo of how the technology is used in practice:

Product page: Machine-vision Image Guided Surgery for Cranial Navigation…

Source: www.medgadget.com