Image-guided surgery

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Image-guided surgery is the general term used for any surgical procedure where the surgeon uses indirect visualization to operate, i.e., by employing imaging instruments in real time, such as fiber optic guides, internal video cameras, flexible or rigid endoscopes, ultrasonography, etc. Most image-guided surgical procedures are minimally invasive.

The technology was originally developed for treatment of brain tumors, but has found widest application when applied to surgery of the sinuses, where image-guided surgery helps avoid damage to brain and nervous system.

A hand-held surgical probe is an essential component of any image-guided surgery system (IGS). During the surgical procedure, the IGS tracks the probe position and displays the anatomy beneath it as three orthogonal image slices on a workstation-based 3D imaging system. Existing IGS systems use different tracking techniques including mechanical, optical, ultrasonic, and electromagnetic.