Publicaties

Ultrasound is an essential tool for guidance of many minimally-invasive surgical and interventional procedures, where accurate placement of the interventional device is critical to avoid adverse events. Needle insertion procedures for anaesthesia, fetal medicine and tumour biopsy are commonly ultrasound-guided, and misplacement of the needle may lead to complications such as nerve damage, organ injury or pregnancy loss. Clear visibility of the ...

In this work, we consider the task of pairwise cross-modality image registration, which may benefit from exploiting additional images available only at training time from an additional modality that is different to those being registered. As an example, we focus on aligning intra-subject multiparametric Magnetic Resonance (mpMR) images, between T2-weighted (T2w) scans and diffusion-weighted scans with high b-value (DWI [Formula: see text]). For ...

Robot-assisted surgery is becoming popular in the operation room (OR) for, e.g., orthopedic surgery (among other surgeries). However, robotic executions related to surgical steps cannot simply rely on preoperative plans. Using pedicle screw placement as an example, extra adjustments are needed to adapt to the intraoperative changes when the preoperative planning is outdated. During surgery, adjusting a surgical plan is non-trivial and typically ...

Novel miniature actuators are needed to design flexible instruments for use in minimally invasive surgery (MIS). Smaller actuators are especially important for instruments with multiple degrees of freedom, which must incorporate multiple actuators in a very limited cross sectional area. Pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) have been selected for this purpose due to their simple construction, high power-to-weight ratio, and promise for ...

Development of high-performance flexible surgical instruments is important to simplify and enable new minimally invasive surgical procedures. New actuation technologies are necessary to produce flexible instrumentation that is capable of accessing difficult-to-reach anatomy and performing laborious tasks without damaging delicate tissues. Recently, concentric McKibben muscles and dual-chamber pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) have been ...

Ultrasound (US) image guidance is widely used for minimally invasive procedures, but the invasive medical devices (such as metallic needles), especially their tips, can be poorly visualised in US images, leading to significant complications. Photoacoustic (PA) imaging is promising for visualising invasive devices and peripheral tissue targets. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) acting as PA excitation sources facilitate the clinical translation of PA ...

This two-paper Series focuses on recent advances and applications of regenerative medicine that could benefit paediatric patients. Innovations in genomic, stem-cell, and tissue-based technologies have created progress in disease modelling and new therapies for congenital and incurable paediatric diseases. Prenatal approaches present unique opportunities associated with substantial biotechnical, medical, and ethical obstacles. Maternal plasma ...

Accurate tissue differentiation during orthopedic and neurological surgeries is critical, given that such surgeries involve operations on or in the vicinity of vital neurovascular structures and erroneous surgical maneuvers can lead to surgical complications. By now, the number of emerging technologies tackling the problem of intraoperative tissue classification methods is increasing. Therefore, this systematic review paper intends to give a ...

Fetal growth restriction (FGR) in human pregnancy is associated with perinatal mortality, short- and long-term morbidities. No prenatal therapy is currently established despite decades of research. We aimed to review interventions in animal models for prenatal FGR treatment, and to seek the next steps for an effective clinical therapy. We registered our protocol and searched MEDLINE, Embase, and The Cochrane Library with no language ...