Creating Roadmaps for Surgeons

This Apple Science podcast features Assistant Professor Maki Sugimoto of Teikyo University Chiba Medical Center, a gastrointestinal surgeon who wanted a better approach to navigation for planning and performing both aggressive and minimally invasive surgeries. His specialty, hepato/biliary/pancreatic surgery, involved navigating through particularly complex anatomy. His wish list included remote control of real-time rendered volumetric images in the operating room, including images projected onto the patient. Dr. Sugimoto uses an 8-core Mac Pro Workstation or a MacBook Pro to run OsiriX, an open-source DICOM viewer that creates volumetric images from patients’ CT and MRI scans. He displays the images on a 23-inch Apple Cinema Display in the operating room and manipulates them with a wireless remote control. He also uses the Mac Pro and a projector to display the images on patients’ bodies when preparing them for laparoscopic surgery. The result: more efficient navigation, better surgical results, and better patient outcomes.