University of Arizona biomedical engineering doctoral student Jeffrey Watson, left, and associate professor of biomedical engineering Marek Romanowski assemble parts for the prototype microscopy device. Credit: UA College of Engineering
It allows neurosurgeons, who use microscopes extensively while operating, to see blood flowing inside vessels and more clearly distinguish cancerous from healthy tissue. It gives a more detailed picture in real time and helps them stay on course in surgeries where being off 2mm could cause paralysis, blindness and even death.
Prof Marek Romanowski, UA said “Our augmented technology provides diagnostic information under the microscope on demand and in color, appearing directly over tissue a surgeon is operating on, as if the tissue was painted to help direct the surgeon’s work.” The technology overlays an actual, or bright field, image a surgeon sees under a microscope with an electronically processed image using near-infrared fluorescence. NIR fluorescence is computer-generated imaging technology in which contrast agents are injected in patients to illuminate vital diagnostic information and help surgeons avoid cutting the wrong vessel or removing healthy tissue.
Most neurosurgeons must look up from a surgical microscope, or stereomicroscope, to view fluorescence on a display monitor. If they have a microscope adapted to project fluorescence, it switches back and forth between the real and electronic views, the surgeons’ field of vision momentarily fading to black in between. Also fluorescence shows only contrast in black and white, not anatomical structures or their spatial relationships. So surgeons must visualize how fluorescence lines up with the anatomical structures they see under the microscope.
The new device, a small box fitted inside a surgical microscope, combines electronic circuitry and optical technologies to superimpose the fluorescence image on the real one and send the augmented view up through the microscope’s right eyepiece to the surgeon.
Perhaps the most valuable application for augmented microscopy is treating brain cancer. “Current surgical microscopes limit how much of the cancer tissue surgeons can see and how precisely they can determine its boundaries.”…”Aggressive resection is associated with the risk of removing normal brain tissue and impairing functions of the patient,” he and his co-authors write in the Journal of Biomedical Optics. “On the other hand, incomplete resection of tumor results in its immediate relapse in 90% of patients. Intraoperative NIR imaging may aid in resection of these challenging tumors.”
Augmented microscopy also holds promise for aneurysm. Neurosurgeons treat aneurysm by sealing it off from connecting vessels to prevent a rupture. Nearly half the patients with ruptured aneurysms die, Lemole said, and at least half the survivors have major mobility and other problems. Augmented technology could improve aneurysm patients’ prognosis, by giving surgeons real-time feedback on every delicate and potentially deadly surgical maneuver they make.
http://news.engineering.arizona.edu/news/new-microscopy-technology-may-help-surgeons-save-more-lives
Recent Comments