Report Detail
European Markets for Image-Guided Surgery Products
For the purposes of this report, the term “image-guided surgery” (IGS) refers to any surgical procedure involving the intraoperative use of a representation of patient anatomy obtained via imaging techniques or computerized methods. These representations are used for real-time visualization of targeted tissues and structures, as well as physical alteration with surgical tools and instruments.
The rationale behind the advent of various IGS approaches and techniques includes the following:
- compatibility with less invasive surgical approaches designed to improve the clinical utility and cost effectiveness of chosen treatment protocols, improve long-term patient outcomes, minimize surgical trauma, and reduce hospital lengths of stay and recovery time;
- enhanced ability to obtain and consistently reproduce intended procedural and therapeutic results;
- improved real-time visualization of the operating field, enabling higher confidence and precision in targeted lesion localization, delineation, and desired surgical alteration; and,
- minimized risk of damage to adjacent vital structures.
The IGS techniques developed to date rely on one or more of the following four different sources for obtaining actionable visual representation of the targeted anatomic structures:
- continuous, direct, real-time intraoperative imaging;
- an “imageless” anatomic model directly morphed from the patient’s anatomy in the operating room (OR);
- standard intermittent intraoperative imaging coupled with a preloaded model of the patient’s anatomy rendered from preprocedural imaging examinations; or,
- a preoperative image-based anatomic model downloaded to the OR computer.