ER4Surgery project

Developing and commercializing SURGERIX – Future of Microsurgery

Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) is becoming a preferred choice of surgeons in many surgical specialities. Still, MIS has posed significant challenges in terms of narrow surgical corridors and depth perception of anatomic structures. Using the high magnification features of surgical devices and the existence of surgical instruments in the surgical view exacerbate these challenges and result in highly restricted surgical views for surgeons.

Our project team is developing SURGERIX, a software solution powered by processing multiple video feeds of surgical scenes with a custom mathematical algorithm pipeline. SURGERIX is being developed, IPR protected and prepared for medtech field business in the Business Finland -funded research-to-business project, ER4Surgery. 

The software solution, SURGERIX, will improve visual capabilities of surgeons during operations, by providing single expanded view from surgical visualization devices. The features of SURGERIX will enable surgeons to work over the areas of interest with a high zoom function and see the surrounding structures and tissues on lower zoom, as well as make desired parts of instruments on the view appear transparent.

The benefits our solution aims to:

Faster surgical operations: less risk of infections of the surgical wounds

Faster recovery of the patients after surgery, potential for shorter hospital stays

Improve visual ergonomics of surgeons by removing need to look at two video feeds

Improves surgical team cognitive and physical ergonomics by providing single view during operation for the whole team.

Improved visual capabilities of the surgeon will decrease risk of surgical errors and thus increase patient safety and save expenses.

SEARCHING FOR

•Collaborations for feasibility studies with potential end users in hospitals and clinics 

•Inputs from industrial partners to push our invention towards commercialization 

•Partnerships with manufacturers of surgical microscopes and other image-guided operating devices, intra-operative navigation software, digital surgical platforms, and computer-assisted surgery

Current members: 

Ahmed Hussein, MD, PhD, Specialist in Neurosurgery, Microsurgery Center of Eastern Finland. Surgical concept development lead

Mastaneh Torkamani Azar, PhD, Post-doc researcher, Regulatory process coordinator.

Paavo Vartiainen, PhD, Post-doc researcher, algorithm and software research & development, , Department of Technical Physics.

Mehdi Faraz, MSc and MSc student in Medical Physics, algorithm & software development.

Gaukhar Mukash, MD, junior medical researcher

Mikko Pitkänen, Entrepreneur and Innovation Performance Coach, Head of Commercialization

Senior members:

Pasi A Karjalainen, Professor in Signal and Image Processing. Experienced in research commercialization

Roman Bednarik, Prof. Expert in eye tracking & human-computer interaction. Head of Interactive Technologies research group (uef.fi/int), School of Computing.

Please contact members via LinkedIn and email forename.surname (a t) uef.fi

The team members are based at HUMEA Lab and Microsurgery Center facilities on Savilahti campus in Kuopio, Finland.