healthcare technology

Surgeons in Swansea, South Wales, have used CT scans to create detailed three-dimensional images which will be used to create the printed implants.

Cutting edge 3D printing technology is being used to recreate the severely injured face of a road accident victim. A team of British surgeons are poised to carry out a pioneering operation, which will restore the symmetry of a man’s face, using new parts produced by a printer. The unaffected side of the biker’s face has been used to create a mirror image, which will enable perfect facial reconstruction.

Computer images are being used to create titanium implants using Additive Manufacturing, which commonly known as 3D printing.

The images are used both to design guides to cut and position facial bones with pinpoint accuracy and create tailor-made implants for the patient.

The guides and implants are being produced in medical-grade titanium in Belgium, at one of the world’s few specialist 3D printing facilities.

Surgeons in Swansea, south Wales, used an X-ray CT scan to create minutely detailed three-dimensional images to design the bespoke implants. 

The work is considered so groundbreaking and radical it already features in an exhibition at London’s Science Museum, even before the operation itself has been carried out.

more at : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2506038/3D-printing-used-reconstruct-mans-FACE.html

Hands-free devices like Google Glass can be really transformative when the hands they free are those of a surgeon. And leading hospitals, including Stanford and the University of California at San Francisco, are beginning to use Glass in the operating room.

In October, UCSF’s Pierre Theodore, a cardiothoracic surgeon, became the first doctor in the United States to obtain Institutional Review Board approval to use the device to assist him during surgery. Theodore pre-loads onto Glass the scans of images of the patient taken just before surgery and consults them during the operation.

“To be able to have those X-rays directly in your field without having to leave the operating room or to log on to another system elsewhere, or to turn yourself away from the patient in order to divert your attention, is very helpful in terms of maintaining your attention where it should be, which is on the patient 100 percent of the time,” said Theodore.

A Stanford-affiliated startup calledVitalMedicals is developing a system that would automate doctors’ access to patient images and medical records using Glass by syncing them automatically via Wi-Fi. VitalMedicals’ debut app, VitalStream, sends live vital signs and alarms to the operating surgeon’s Glass device during conscious sedation. It gets the vital signs from its integration with the ViSi mobile vital sign monitor

VitalMedicals is working on a second app, SurgStream, which displays the pre-surgical images and streams live fluoroscopy,  ultrasound  and  endoscopy video to Glass or a tablet.

The projects, which emerged from Google’s early outreach to developers to create apps for Glass, are still in their earliest stages and still have time to iron out the bugs. And with many doctors interested in applications for the wearable interface, Glass is likely to spread quickly when they do.

more at original : http://singularityhub.com/2013/12/01/google-glass-makes-its-way-into-operating-rooms/