Image guided hybrid interventional therapy

Minimal-invasive image guided therapies continuously gain respect for their advantages in cardiology or interventional radiology.

The possibilities of endovascular treatment allow for interventions that are often impossible within traditional surgery due to patients' general state of health.

Though more complex therapies as the placement of aortic prostheses or transjugular intrahepatic stent shunts have high requirements concerning the navigation of vascular catheters.

Working on the mentioned applications a smart catheter supported by an electromagnetic tracking system is developed in cooperation with industrial and clinical partners.

Pre-interventional planning of the procedure is done within computertomographic datasets and target points are defined for the navigation.

By visualizing the position and orientation of the invasive instruments in CT slices or 3D volume reconstructions the radiologist may easily succeed in the quest of correct cathether handling.

First phantom based trials have already proven the feasibility of the concept and are to be continued in-vivo (swines) shortly.