C-arm, which derives its name from its iconic C-shaped circular structure, is used primarily for imaging during surgery to help minimize patient injury. It is mainly used for imaging during surgical procedures, providing an imaging basis for the surgical process and helping doctors to obtain more effective information to assist in the treatment process while minimizing patient injury. According to the structure mode of C-arm, it can be divided into two categories: fixed and mobile. The mobile C-arm occupies a wide market because it can be easily moved, easily covers multiple operating rooms, has a relatively low price and fully meets clinical needs. It plays an important role in many surgical scenarios such as orthopedics and surgery.
The traditional mobile C-arm provides both fluoroscopic and photographic images in the clinic, with two-dimensional images from different angles to help doctors make judgments about the information within the target area of the surgery. With the development of technology and the increasing demand for precise surgery, pure 2D images gradually failed to meet the information requirements needed for surgery, which led to the emergence of 3D mobile C-arms.
The 3D mobile C-arm, commonly known as “intraoperative CT”, can rapidly generate transverse, sagittal and coronal tomographic images and 3D stereoscopic images intraoperatively, which can display the anatomical results of the vertebral body and its accessories more clearly and completely through tomographic images of different orientations, and visually analyze the three-dimensional spatial relationship between the lesion and the surrounding tissues. The three-dimensional tomographic imaging enables more accurate surgical simulation and surgical planning.
What are the advantages of the 3D mobile C-arm?
First, rich real-time information
As can be seen from the figure, the two-dimensional image can provide overlapping images of the target area in a certain plane. Although the difference in density of different tissues in the human body makes the image more informative, the mutual overlap between tissues can still occur, such as spatial location and many other information lost in the image or unrecognizable, which affects the collection and application of information by the doctor.
The MPR image set of 3D images can be cut through different planes to enable richer information to be presented within the imaging area. In particular, the cross-sectional plane, which cannot be covered by 2D images, provides another spatial dimension of the amount of information.
As a user, although doctors have preoperative images as a basis for determination during surgery, each surgery is unique and requires real-time information provided by intraoperative 3D images as the basis for intraoperative treatment and operation.
Second, accurate surgical effect determination
In MPR images, coronal, sagittal and cross-sectional information greatly improves the doctor’s determination of the lesion area and the surgical effect.
Third, to protect the operation
The richer information brought by real-time intraoperative 3D images can be used as the basis for the surgeon’s judgment of the surgical execution and the real-time image judgment after the surgical operation, thus guaranteeing the surgical effect.
In previous surgeries, there may be a situation where a certain surgical effect is found to need adjustment in the CT examination of the imaging department after surgery, and then it often needs to be returned to the stage and revised to solve the problem. The intraoperative 3D imaging function provided by the 3D mobile C-arm can merge this step into the surgical process, effectively reducing the risk for both doctors and patients and escorting the surgery.
Fourth, the imaging basis of robotic navigation
In recent years, the application of robotic navigation devices in the clinic is becoming more and more widespread, and 3D imaging is the basis for the surgical execution of robotic navigation system, which has the dual roles of map positioning and effect inspection, making the surgical execution more accurate and the surgical effect verification more secure.
The 3D mobile C-arm with orthopedic surgery robot is mainly used in the contemporary surgery clinical application for some difficult and complex surgeries, especially in the spine surgery and other clinical surgeries that require high accuracy, such as the placement of thoracolumbar screws, cervical screws, pelvis, etc.
Perlove Medical is the manufacturer of the whole process solution of “Flatbed 3D C-arm + Orthopedic Surgery Robot“. The 3D mobile C-arm (with independent core intellectual property rights) and the orthopedic surgery robot can be used together to assist doctors in preoperative planning of spinal surgery and accurate nail placement during surgery. With the integrated adaptive alignment technology, automatic alignment and registration can be realized. The alignment process requires no human intervention and accuracy is not affected by image quality. The system is more compatible, the information is more accurate, and the alignment process is more convenient.
