Entering A New Era of Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery - It's Time For Augmented Reality
Once only a futuristic thought, augmented reality in surgery may be upon us sooner than you think. Recently, Business Wire published the following article to their online magazine, “Dr. Frank Phillips is First in the World to Use Augmented Reality Surgical Guidance in Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery” Within, we get our first glimpse into what minimally invasive spine surgery will look like in years to come.
The days of robots, scanners and headsets feeding doctors information to drive safety for spine surgical patients is here. Augmedics has released the first FDA approved augmented reality technology to allow spine surgeons to now see the entire spine through the surface of the patient. Essentially, the Augmedics xvision™ Spine System is a surgical guidance system giving a surgeon the view of a patient during surgery as a 3-dimensional (3D) spinal anatomy. Surgeons see through the skin, as if they have x-ray vision!
I have been an early adopter as well as an investor in the Chicago-based company, Augmedics. The FDA has now cleared the xvision system for operational use by trained surgeons. It is a product intended to revolutionize how surgery is done, giving the surgeon better control and visualization. Such advanced technology has the promise to increase safety, decrease length of surgery and improve surgical accuracy.
The xvision Spine System consists of a transparent near-eye-display headset. It accurately determines the position of surgical tools, in real time, and a virtual trajectory is then superimposed on the patient's CT data. In a minimally invasive procedure, the 3D navigation data is then projected onto the surgeon’s retina using the headset, allowing him or her to simultaneously look at the patient and see the navigation data without averting his or her eyes to a remote screen during the procedure.
Essentially, the patient is brought to operating room and positioned on the spine frame. An intraoperative 3D high-def scan is performed of the patient. These images are seen by surgeon through the highly specialized headset. Then the surgeon’s specific instruments are registered and visualized in the AR system. Together, the surgeon and the AR platform navigate the exact placement and positioning of instrumentation to perform the minimally invasive surgery.
Spine surgery truly has entered a new era. I look forward to continued innovations such as this, which allow me to lead the field of minimally invasive spine surgery.