Smallest 3-D Camera Offers Brain Surgery Innovation
To operate on the brain, doctors need to see fine details on a small scale. A tiny camera that could produce 3-D images from inside the brain would help surgeons see more intricacies of the tissue they are handling and lead to faster, safer procedures.
An endoscope with such a camera is being developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. MARVEL, which stands for Multi Angle Rear Viewing Endoscopic tooL, has been honored with the Outstanding Technology Development award from the Federal Laboratory Consortium. An endoscope is a device that examines the interior of a body part.
MARVEL’s camera is a mere 0.2 inch (4 millimeters) in diameter and about 0.6 inch (15 millimeters) long. It is attached to a bendable “neck” that can sweep left or right, looking around corners with up to a 120-degree arc. This allows for a highly maneuverable endoscope.
Operations with the small camera would not require the traditional open craniotomy, a procedure in which surgeons take out large parts of the skull. Craniotomies result in higher costs and longer stays in hospitals than surgery using an endoscope.
Source & further reading:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4702
#scitech #brainsurgery #3Dcamera #nasa #endoscopy #medicaladvance
I worked on an ultrasound transducer that could be cathetered into a beating heart, image it, and then ablate tissue based on the imaging. It provided much better outcomes. Having actual video for that kind of low-intrusive surgery would be fantastic.
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