Endovascular navigation in patients: vessel-based registration of electromagnetic tracking to preoperative images.

Electromagnetic tracking of instruments combined with preoperative images can supplement fluoroscopy for guiding endovascular aortic repair (EVAR). The aim of this study was to evaluate the in-vivo accuracy of a vessel-based registration algorithm for matching electromagnetically tracked positions of an endovascular instrument to preoperative computed tomography angiography. Five patients undergoing elective EVAR were included, and a clinically available semi-automatic 3D-3D registration algorithm, based on similarity measures computed over the entire image, was used for reference.

Cardiac surgery does not lead to loss of oscillatory components in circulatory signals.

The circulatory system is oscillatory in its nature. Oscillatory components linked to physiological processes and underlying regulatory mechanisms are identifiable in circulatory signals. Autonomic regulation is essential for the system's ability to deal with external exposure, and the integrity of oscillations may be considered a hallmark of a healthy system.

Influence of patient-specific rehearsal on operative metrics and technical success for endovascular aneurysm repair.

Introduction: Patient-specific rehearsal (PsR) is a recent technology within virtual reality (VR) simulation that lets the operators train on patient-specific data in a simulated environment prior to the procedure. Endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) is a complex procedure where operative metrics and technical success might improve after PsR.

Material And Methods: We compared technical success and operative metrics (endovascular procedure time, contralateral gate cannulation time, fluoroscopy time, total radiation dose, number of angiograms and contrast medium use) between 30 patients, where the operators performed PsR (the PsR group), and 30 patients without PsR (the control group).

Optimal timing of assessment tasks depending on experience level of surgical trainees.

Box trainers with motion analysis are important add-ons to surgical training and skills assessment outside the operating room, given that they exhibit construct validity. Four different tasks were tested for construct validity on a new laparoscopic box trainer with integrated motion analysis. Tracking data from the simulator were analyzed for eighteen parameters per task using an in-house software comparing participants with three different experience levels.