Electromagnetic tracking advances increase surgical navigation options
Garrett Plank, business development director, TT Electronics, analyses how distortion detection and mitigation represent a breakthrough for a greater number of devices and procedures.
Depending on their clinical application, sensor-enabled catheters and needles may require navigation. This can be achieved with high accuracy and precision by pairing the device with an electromagnetic (EM) tracking system. The sensor’s precise location is shown to the clinician throughout a procedure, even as a spectrum of options, such as sensor numbers, design configurations, shapes, and geometries, enable the navigation characteristics of the device itself. Electromagnetics offers surgical vision advantages beyond the line of sight but has been impeded by the limitations of distortion and frequency challenges. These limitations are addressed in a next-gen system from Radwave, a developer and manufacturer of electromagnetic-based tracking systems for use in biomedical and other applications.
In a novel advancement, the EM tracking platform’s antenna recognise the presence of distortion, its strength, and the direction of its source. Once distortion is identified, the system executes a range of mitigations to ensure accurate location information is gathered from the full slate of sensors within the sensing volume. As a result, clinicians no longer need to “map” distortion before a procedure, an all too common approach to EM tracking. In this legacy scenario, healthcare providers would be required to selectively minimise the equipment in the room – especially critical for mobile equipment or devices in motion that would be inherently unmappable in advance.
Older EM systems also relied on wider electromagnetic frequency bands, creating potential interference with medical equipment. In a high-tech surgical suite, a legacy EM system might be prevented from simultaneous use near advanced machines such as ECG, other biopotential signals, and fluoroscopic C-Arms used for imaging.
The Radwave system primarily features a control unit, antenna, and 5DOF / 6DOF sensors. Depending upon the unique demands of a specific medical device and procedure domain, each component is customisable using advanced algorithms configured at the time of manufacture.
Plug-and-play sensors are pre-calibrated to perform within the EM platform, reducing time to market for device developers. Radwave’s EM tracking platform ensures high sampling rates across all sensors for high location confidence in as many as 24 sensors. The platform readily integrates with medical devices via a simple, encrypted API based on an open-source software developer kit. The platform itself is highly customisable, featuring an adjustable sensing volume that can shrink or grow to meet the specific requirements of a surgical procedure.
EM tracking with sensor integration is facilitating smarter surgical vision – beyond the line of sight. It’s an advancement that is bringing minimally invasive techniques to a growing number of healthcare disciplines and empowering device developers to focus resources on distinguishing their own devices.