During intra-operative scanning, the MRI travels in and out of the operating room using ceiling-mounted rails to provide real-time images without moving the patient.
Image Credit: Copyright 2015 IMRIS, Inc.
For Joseph Paydarfar, MD, using a CT scan to take images of a patient before transoral surgery has had its limitations.
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May 2015Like many physicians, Dr. Paydarfar, the section chief of otolaryngology, audiology, and maxillofacial surgery at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and associate professor of surgery at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, relied on the scans taken prior to surgery to see a patient’s anatomy and understand where particular landmarks are located. But when a device is placed in the mouth after surgery begins, the area moves, and the landscape changes, making it difficult to rely on the pre-surgical image as a map. Historically, for neurosurgical applications, patients had their scans taken outside the operating suite and were then moved to the operating room for surgery. If another image was required, the patient had to be returned back to the area where CT scans were taken, adding time to the procedure.
But, with new technology that combines both MRI and CT imaging capability directly in the operating room, doctors like Dr. Paydarfar are now able to use intra-operative imaging, a process by which photos can be taken before, during, and after a surgery if necessary, to show a fuller perspective of the anatomy and the results of a surgical procedure—all while the patient remains in the operating room. With CT scans providing information about bone landmarks and MRI images giving more data about soft tissue in the brain, eyes, and similar types of structures, merging the data that both technologies provide gives a physician far more detail than ever before. Dr. Paydarfar is currently recruiting patients for a research study that will show exactly how the critical structures in the mouth and throat move as surgical devices are placed into the oral cavity. “The goal of this research is be able to predict mathematically how the airway is deformed with the application of various surgical devices,” Dr. Paydarfar said.