3D echocardiography for interventional guidance

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Medical Image Processing
• Image-guided Therapy
• Image-guided Minimally Invasive Surgery

Traditional cardiac surgery involves major trauma to the patient in the form of a large chest incision and the use of a heart-lung machine to stop the heart. In contrast, minimally invasive cardiac techniques allow the surgical procedure to be performed using small or no incisions while the heart remains beating.

A major challenge in minimally invasive cardiac surgery is the fact that surgeons cannot directly see what they are doing because the heart is not exposed. My research investigates the use of 3D ultrasound throughout these procedures to provide a three-dimensional beating-heart view of the patient’s heart on a computer screen. We combine this visualization of the heart with virtual representations of surgical tools to give the surgeon an accurate representation of the procedure as it is performed.

 

KEY QUESTIONS

• How can 3D ultrasound be used to enable minimally invasive cardiac surgery?

 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Pace, D.F., Kikinis, R., and Hata, N. (2007) An accessible, hands-on tutorial system for image-guided therapy and medical robotics using a robot and open source software. “Open Source and Open Data for MICCAI” workshop, 10th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assister Intervention.

CURRICULUM VITAE

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