A locator for the placement of a fiducial support device for brachytherapy may be used to perform a brachytherapy treatment in which one or more radioactive seeds are implanted into a treatment region of a patient.

The invention relates to a medical device for transporting and positioning a therapeutic emitting element into a treatment channel to be temporarily placed in or at the body of the patient to treat tumours. The therapeutic emitting element is connected to a transport element and which is driven by at least one drive motor. The device has a connecting element comprising multiple connector openings. The connecting element is used for connecting a transport tube to a respective connector opening. The transport tube is connected to an applicator, needle, tube or catheter for driving the transport element into the treatment channel. The device has a selector mechanism through which the plurality of transport elements are driven. An annular guiding arrangement guides the transport elements into connector openings in the connecting element. The annular guiding arrangement also comprises a plurality of spaced outlets. The inlets of the multiple patterns are each connected to an outlet by guiding channels. Each outlet aligns to a connector opening in the connecting element to allow the transport element from each outlet to be driven into the connector openings.

A brachytherapy needle guidance device is a device that facilitates the placement of a brachytherapy needle into a treatment region in tissue. This tissue may a breast tissue and the brachytherapy needle may be a fiducial needle. The brachytherapy needle guidance device may have an anchoring feature that anchors the brachytherapy needle guidance device into the tissue once it is properly positioned. The brachytherapy needle guidance device is used by software for treatment planning.

A system with integrated tracking includes a procedure-specific hardware component (112 or 116) disposed at or near a region of interest. A field generator (114) is configured to generate a field with a field of view covering the region of interest. A mounting device (115) is connected to the field generator and is coupled to the procedure-specific hardware. The field generator is fixedly positioned by the mounting device to permit workflow access to the region of interest without interfering with the field generator and to provide a known position of the field generator relative to the region of interest. A tracking device (110) is configured to be inserted in or near the region of interest to be tracked within the field of view of the field generator to generate tracking data.

The invention relates to a holder device for holding a medical instrument, the device comprising:

a base that is to be carried by an apparatus comprising a medical imaging probe associated with the medical instrument; and

a carrier structure for carrying the medical instrument and movably mounted on the base so as to be capable of moving on the base between a first position and a second position.

The invention also relates to an installation including both such a device and a needle-guide.

The radiotherapy applicator system includes an applicator pad adapted to cover a target area of a patient for radiation treatment. One or more spaced channels extend through a length of the applicator pad. Each channel receives a catheter sleeve, and an elongate seed line is selectively inserted into a corresponding catheter sleeve. Each seed line contains one or more radioactive seeds and spacers arranged in a predetermined pattern along the length of the seed line. The seed lines within the applicator pad form an array of a predetermined, geometric treatment pattern of seeds covering the target area, the treatment pattern predetermined from a treatment plan for that target area and the patient. Shielding is provided to protect staff administering the treatment and non-target areas from harmful levels of radiation exposure. The radiotherapy applicator system is reusable for multi-session treatment and may be provided as a customized kit.

A system, for transcutaneous photodynamic therapy in an organ or organ segment of an organic body, includes a plurality of light applicators (9), a supply unit (23) and a placement template (39) placeable relative to the organic body for defined orientation of the light applicators. The light applicators include a needle-shaped insertion portion (15) for transcutaneous piercing along a piercing axis (E), a light-emitting applicator tip (19) at the distal end (13) of the insertion portion, and a fixing point (43) at a proximal distance d from the applicator tip. The placement template defines a plurality of fixing point receptacles (51) for fixing the light applicators with a defined fixing point and includes a first and second template parts (71, 75) defining first and second subsets (73, 77) of fixing point receptacles. The first template part is guidingly displaceable relative to the second template part along the piercing axis.

A system, for transcutaneous photodynamic therapy in an organ or organ segment of an organic body, includes a plurality of light applicators, a supply unit and a placement template placeable relative to the organic body for defined orientation of the light applicators. The light applicators include a needle-shaped insertion portion for transcutaneous piercing along a piercing axis, a light-emitting applicator tip at the distal end of the insertion portion, and a fixing point at a proximal distance from the applicator tip. The placement template defines fixing point receptacles for fixing the light applicators with a defined fixing point wherein the receptacles are arranged in accordance with a three-dimensional fixing point grid structure, that corresponds to a virtual organ-specific target point grid structure for the light-emitting applicator tips in the organ that is arranged parallel-displaced relative to the target point grid structure by the distance d along the piercing axis.

A brachytherapy needle guidance device is a device that facilitates the placement of a brachytherapy needle into a treatment region in tissue. This tissue may a breast tissue and the brachytherapy needle may be a fiducial needle. The brachytherapy needle guidance device may have an anchoring feature that anchors the brachytherapy needle guidance device into the tissue once it is properly positioned. The brachytherapy needle guidance device is used by software for treatment planning.

A processing device (1) and method for determining a position and/or orientation for a multi-hole grid template in a medical interventional procedure is disclosed. An anatomical spatial information processing unit (2) receives and/or processes data representative of a target spatial volume in the body, and a grid position sampler (4) generates candidate positions of the grid template. A quality calculator (5) calculates, for each candidate, a quality metric indicating the suitability of the candidate position of the grid template for the interventional procedure. A position selector (6) selects the position and/or orientation from the candidates based on the quality metric. For each candidate, an spatial relationship between each grid hole trajectory and the target volume is determined, and the quality metric takes, at least, this spatial relationship into account.