Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery

Graduate Research Students: Cristian, Andrew, Danielle, Qi, & Edward

Minimally-invasive cardiac procedures can potentially reduce complications arising from surgical interventions by minimizing the size of the incision required to access the heart. This can be done both robotically as well as using image-guidance.

In the latter method, medical imaging is employed to visualize intracardiac targets without direct vision and most procedures currently require the arrest of the heart and use of a cardiopulmonary bypass. This causes a higher risk of patient morbidity. To further reduce the risk of invasiveness, techniques have been developed to perform interventions on the beating-heart.

 

Our Contribution

In our laboratory, we are interested in developing imaging techniques within an integrated solution that can allow the surgeon to safely access cardiac chambers in the beating heart.

What tools or techniques can we adapt to allow the surgeon to access cardiac chambers in the beating heart?

• The universal cardiac introducer (UCI) which is a robust interventional port-placement system
• An augmented image visualization system that integrates real-time ultrasound imaging, virtual models of the subject’s beating heart and magnetically tracked surgical instruments
• Accurate subject-specific dynamic models of the beating heart and surgical targets
• 4D dynamic cardiac display to give surgeons morphologic and functional information about the beating heart
• Ability to register multi-modal images (i.e. 3D CT + 2D US and 3D US + MRI)