Grant: Idea to Innovation

The human spine provides protection for the spinal cord, flexibility for motion, and structural support for movement. It is also a key part of our body affected by trauma, degeneration, cancer and other disease processes, all of which can afflict individuals ranging from children to elderly patients in our population. In surgeries that require hardware implantation of the spine, surgeons are faced with the very difficult task of inserting screws into the spine without causing damage to the spinal cord and adjacent arteries or veins of the patient. The difficulty lies in the fact that the surgeon must place the screws deep into the vertebrae, but can only visualize the top of the bone resulting in up to a 55% chance of misplaced spinal screws or implants. Therefore, our innovation includes a system and method for surgical navigation, which can provide continuous sub-surface visualization of the vertebrae to accurately guide the insertion of medical implants without the use of additional ionizing radiation during spinal procedures. Our team of surgeons and engineers have designed, fabricated and tested an Alpha prototype surgical navigation system that provides continuous surgical guidance feedback. This Phase I proposal will allow our team to acquire industry and surgeon driven data to create a pre-clinical package to attract strategic partnerships for the continued development of this technology towards a commercially available surgical navigation system.