Grant: Proof of Principle Program - Phase I

In North America, approximately 60-80 % of the population suffers from back pain at some stage of their lives. For a significant number of patients suffering from back pain, even basic daily activities become impossible and spinal surgery (involving implanted screws or other hardware placement) may become necessary. However, surgery carries its own risks such as misplaced screws leading to a wide array of complications. Surgical navigation has the potential to reduce these risks through accurate guidance. Existing commercial surgical navigation systems have the ability to provide the underlying structure of a vertebra, but is only used by 10% of spine surgeons. However, present technologies require the attachment of reference frames which suffer from (a) lengthy set-up, (b) error from movement of reference frame, (c) error from spine movement between preoperative imaging and patient positioning for surgery. Our solution uses continuous intraoperative optical imaging with a specialized lighting scheme and redundant camera systems to accurately guide the placement of orthopedic implants and to track the motion of surgical targets, without the use of cumbersome reference frames. The innovative technology developed in this proposal will also limit exposure to harmful radiation on both the patient and the health care team. The low-cost high-performance design principles in this project will likely generate production models suitable for export to both developed world and developing countries (the latter currently has no readily available access to advanced surgical navigation platforms). Finally, from the health care system perspective in the long run, deploying a low-cost real-time surgical navigation system for spinal procedures will potentially provide cost-savings by decreasing surgical time, complication rate, and revision surgeries, which undoubtedly will benefit individual patients in Canada and worldwide.