ments to track their locations during surgery.
"Our system has disposable trackers that surgeons pop onto the
instruments they want to track," says Ms. Cunningham. But the sensors
are fairly large, which means instruments they want to track have to be
rigid in order to accommodate the sensors.
Newer microsensors can be placed on non-rigid instrumentation, on
areas other than the handle or incorporated into clamps that can be
attached to any instrument, so surgeons can track their favorite tools.
These microsensors can also be placed on a guidewire, which sur-
geons can navigate through complex sinus anatomy to where they
need to place a dilating balloon.
Dr. Citardi believes the ultimate image-guidance system will incorpo-
rate AR overlay of important clinical information, 3D anatomical mod-
els and novel microsensors into a single platform. There's no doubt the
image guiding systems you will have to choose from in the future will
offer a whole new view of ENT surgery.
OSM
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