Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects

Lung cancer remains the most common cancer and the most common cause of death from cancer in NorthAmerica. Secondary effects of treating cancer may be mitigated through a minimally invasive approach. Whilepromising, all minimally invasive surgery and therapy (MIST) methods suffer from the same problem: withoutdirect access to the target tissues, reliable and accurate tumour localization remains a formidable challenge.The objective of this research is to develop and validate a system for MIST, with particular emphasis on lungcancer, which provides accurate tumour localization through the integration of tracked and fused kinesthetic,tactile, ultrasound (US), and computed tomography (CT) data, and enables accurate delivery of ablativetherapies. The proposed research will consist of the following steps: 1. Develop a minimally invasivemechatronic tool capable of performing multi-modal tumour localization. This device will collect data fromtactile, force, position and US imaging sensors that will be fused to provide robust and accurate localizationdata. 2. Develop patient-specific procedures that allow tracking of lung tumours with respect to knownanatomical landmarks using preoperative CT and intraoperative US in order to compensate for the effect ofinsufflation, lung deflation, respiration, and patient motion. 3. Develop a sensor fusion strategy that combinesthe intraoperative multi-sensor data from the tumour localization instrument with patient-specific preoperativeCT. 4. Develop modular minimally invasive ""smart"" instruments for image-guided tumour ablation. Theseinstruments will allow precise delivery of probe- and needle-based ablative therapies, and will incorporatereal-time position tracking and provide active tremor compensation. 5. Integrate the above elements into acomplete surgical platform that presents the information effectively for increased safety and reliability. Theoutcomes of procedures performed with the proposed system will be compared to those performed usingcurrent MIST techniques to assess the effectiveness of the system. Evaluation will progress through tissuephantoms, ex vivo tissue and in vivo animal trials.