Non-Contact Intraoperative Optical Imaging During Instrumentation Procedure

Overview

For a significant number of patients suffering from back pain, even basic daily activities become impossible. It is at this time that spinal surgery becomes necessary in order to improve the patient's quality of life. To combat these symptoms, surgical implants (e.g. pedicle screws, rods, etc.) are used to aid in stabilizing and correcting the deformities of the spine, particularly after spinal decompression. Surgical navigation has a great potential to improve the accuracy of correctly implanting these devices; however, present technologies rely on intraoperative imaging that uses ionizing radiation (e.g. computed tomography, fluoroscopy, etc.), require cumbersome set-ups, the physical attachment of fiducial markers, and cannot account for patient motion. Therefore, the investigators propose a real-time intraoperative optical topographical imaging based surgical guidance system capable of accurately guiding the placement of implanted devices such as pedicle screws.

The hypothesis is that optical visualization of surgically exposed bony anatomy with computerized navigation can accurately estimate subsurface anatomy and in the future, potentially guide the placement of pedicle screws during spinal surgery. The specific research aims are as follows: i) an intraoperative non-contact optical imaging system can quantify the entry point and trajectory of pedicle screws implanted by the spine surgeon; and ii) intraoperative optical imaging can predict the entry point and trajectory of pedicle screws as verified by post-operative computed tomography (CT) scans.

Conditions