The invention relates to a method of navigation of a tool to be used in a surgical operation for treating a target region within the body of a patient.

A non-invasive system for concurrent monitoring cardiac, respiration activity and other body motions from a patent support device integrated with biometric sensors. Such system can also predicate a motion state to enable/disable a medical imaging device or radiotherapy device during cancer and/or cardiac arrhythmias treatment.

A surgical instrument navigation system is provided that visually simulates a virtual volumetric scene of a body cavity of a patient from a point of view of a surgical instrument residing in the cavity of the patient, wherein the surgical instrument, as provided, may be a steerable surgical catheter with a biopsy device and/or a surgical catheter with a side-exiting medical instrument, among others. Additionally, systems, methods and devices are provided for forming a respiratory-gated point cloud of a patient's respiratory system and for placing a localization element in an organ of a patient.

An instrument system that includes an image capture device, an elongate body, an optical fiber and a controller is provided. The elongate body is operatively coupled to the image capture device. The optical fiber is operatively coupled to the elongate body and has a strain sensor provided on the optical fiber. The controller is operatively coupled to the optical fiber and adapted to receive a signal from the strain sensor and to determine a position or orientation of the image capture device based on the signal.

A method of planning an image-guided interventional procedure to be performed on a patient, where expected motion of the patient, such as that of a breathing cycle, is determined on a sequence of preoperative images, and the procedure trajectory is planned accordingly. The method takes into account the initial positions of the interventional entry, the target region, and any obstructions or forbidden regions between the entry point and the target region, and uses object tracking methods of image processing on the preoperative images to determine how the positions of these three elements change relative to each other during the patient's motion cycle. The method may automatically search in at least some of the preoperative images taken at different temporal points of the motion cycle, for a path connecting the entry point with the target and avoiding the obstacles, which provides minimal lateral pressure on the patient's tissues.

The present disclosure provides a human organ movement monitoring method for monitoring human organ movement in a surgical process in real time and a surgical navigation system. The human organ movement monitoring method includes: obtaining first position and orientation of movement monitoring tools in an image coordinate system identified from a preoperative three-dimensional medical image; determining second position and orientation of the movement monitoring tools in a positioning coordinate system in the surgery in real time; calculating an optimal coordinate transformation relation between the positioning coordinate system and the image coordinate system in real time based on the first position and orientation of the movement monitoring tools in the image coordinate system and the second position and orientation thereof in the positioning coordinate system, and calculating overall errors of coordinate transformation of the movement monitoring tools from the positioning coordinate system to the image coordinate system based on the optimal coordinate transformation relation; and evaluating movement degree of a human organ at various moments relative to a preoperative scanning moment based on the real-time determined overall errors of coordinate transformation of the movement monitoring tools at the various moments.

The present invention relates to a respiratory gating system for a patient using a natural breathing method during radiation therapy, and a method for emitting radiation thereby. A respiratory gating system allowing radiation to be emitted by orienting to the position, which varies according to a patient's breathing, of a subject on which treatment is to be carried out, comprises: a breathing respirator for allowing the patient's respiration amount to be measured; external markers to be respectively adhered to triangulation points outside the human body of the surrounding region of the subject, of the patient, on which treatment is to be carried out; an image diagnosis device for imaging the region of the subject of the patient on which treatment is to be carried out, by photographing the same; and a computer program programmed so as to calculate, as position coordinates, the change in position of the subject on which treatment is to be carried out, according to the respiration amount measured by the computed tomography equipment and the each external marker, through a triangulation method and dual polynomial equations, and to transmit the position coordinates, which changes in real time, to radiation therapy equipment, wherein radiation is emitted by the respiratory gating system, and there is an effect of further increasing the accuracy and stability of the entire radiation therapy result by tracking, in real time, the movement of an organ, which is the subject on which treatment is to be carried out according to breathing, through a respiratory gating system which uses natural breathing rather than a breathing method through the training of the patient.

A method of confirming the location of a target tissue within a patient using a navigation system is provided. The navigation system displays images from a pre-acquired image dataset and provides location information of a medical device within a patient in relation to a patient tracking device affixed to the patient. The method includes determining an initial location of the target tissue, navigating a steerable catheter through the airway of the patient to a position proximate the initial location, tracking the location of the steerable catheter in the airway using the navigation system, generating information regarding the presence of the target tissue using a tissue sensing device inserted into the steerable catheter, and determining a confirmed location of the target tissue in relation to the patient tracking device using the generated information regarding the presence of the target tissue and the tracked location of the steerable catheter.

A method comprises segmenting first modality image data representing a model of one or more passageways within a patient; generating a first set of points based on the segmented image data; registering the first set of points to a second set of points obtained by a second modality by: determining a set of matches between the first and second sets of points, and discarding a first subset of the set of matches based on a heuristic to generate a modified set of matches by ignoring an associated set of matches between the first and second sets of points when computing a corrective motion for the second set of points—an ignored match is included in a second subset of the set of matches when computing a second corrective motion for the second set of points; and displaying a visual representation of the passageways based on the modified set of matches.

A system and method for a catheter in a luminal network including capturing images via an optical sensor, comparing the captured images to pre-operative images, identifying fiducials in the captured images that correspond to fiducials in the pre-operative images; and depicting the position of the catheter in a three-dimensional (3D) model or two-dimensional (2D) images derived from the pre-operative images.