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Re-inventing surgery: lasers and advanced imaging in the OR
By Francesco Bortoluzzi, Junior Project Manager
Every year, swissnex Boston hosts the University of Basel for Basel Night, an event open to the public when this oldest university of Switzerland showcases its most exciting researchers to one of the biggest hubs of research and innovation in the world – Boston.
On February 23rd Philipp Cattin highlighted his latest research on re-inventing bone surgery with lasers and virtual reality technology. Cattin is Associate Professor in the Medical Image Analysis Center at the Medical Faculty of the University of Basel, where he also heads the Biomedical Engineering Department. He brings to bear his background in computer science in order to develop new medical technology – an endeavor aided also by his practical experience as an apprentice in the Swiss vocational education system before moving on to higher education studies.
Cattin’s keynote traced the evolution of bone surgery throughout history, before the introduction of the concept of laser cutting in the middle of the 20th century, when surgical lasers applications were deemed impractical due to the laser burning tissues and preventing proper healing. More recently, however, advancements in the applications of lasers have improved so that it is possible to cut tissues in a way that not only is very precise, but that also has improved healing characteristics compared to mechanical friction means. Furthermore, robot-guided laser ablation during surgical operations allows for new three-dimensional cuts of almost any desired shape enabling completely new surgical techniques, thus simplifying procedures and shortening the time required to plan and carry out surgical interventions.
Advancements in laser surgery go hand in hand with advancements in medical imaging technology, as Cattin demonstrated thanks to a demo of the MIRACLE project at the University of Basel. The MIRACLE allows doctors to visualize medical scans in a VR setting that then allows for precise operational plans: for example the MRI of a patient’s head can be manipulated in VR in order gain a better understanding of the position of aneurisms that need to be removed.
Building on the topic of advanced medical imaging, Dr. Jayender Jagadeesan (Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Research Associate at Brigham and Women's Hospital) made a short presentation on the AMIGO suite at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The AMIGO, which stands for Advanced Multimodality Image Guided Operating suite, is an operating room equipped with all the main medical imaging machines, which allows the best possible views of the area of operation. The medical images provided by the AMIGO suite can also be integrated with augmented reality goggles allowing surgeons to chart the best path to a successful operation.
Sheila Russo, currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Microrobotics Lab and Biodesign Lab at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, then also gave a short presentation on robotic approaches to enhance laser surgery. In particular, she explained her work on developing scopes making use of laser cutting technology for endoscopic procedures, which have the clear advantage of not cutting unnecessary tissue in order to complete operations.
After the three presentations, the evening opened up to a panel discussion between the researchers moderated by Frank Preiswerk, a postdoctoral fellow in radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and former PhD student under Philipp Cattin at the University of Basel. The discussion ranged from which operating robots are best suited to assist surgeons, to what are going to be the most common applications of the technologies the researchers had described. The audience then had the chance to engage the panel with questions and comments about their work during a Q&A session before the event turned into a networking reception with the chance to try both simulations of both the MIRACLE project (with VR headsets) and the AMIGO suite (with AR goggles).
swissnex Boston would like to thank the University of Basel and Philipp Cattin for their continued support of the Basel Night throughout the years, as well as the other panelists, and the audience.
