October 16, 2007 — Ultrasound-based image-guided surgery

A team of faculty from the Viterbi and Keck Schools led by Dr. Jesse Yen, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, has won a Zumberge Interdisciplinary Award for its proposed project entitled "Use of Ultrasound for Image-Guided Surgery". The other members of the team include Dr. Brent Liu, Associate Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering, and Dr. Shirin Towfigh, Assistant Professor of Surgery.

The project is aimed at developing a real-time ultrasonic navigation system for image-guided surgery, analogous to a real-time global positioning system (GPS), to assist the surgeon in navigating through the body. The procedure on which this system would initially be applied is endoluminal stent grafting of abdominal aortic aneurysms. Endoluminal stenting is currently deployed using real-time two-dimensional x-ray with low precision and accuracy. Ultrasonic GPS can track the stent’s location and allow deployment to within less than 3mm. As a result, the patient would undergo a much safer operation, without radiation exposure, and with less morbidity than traditionally available surgery. Upon the development and laboratory testing of ultrasonic GPS for safety and efficacy, this tool may prove to be applicable to a wide range of general surgical procedures.