Automatic ENT Surgery Preplanning Using Backtracking Maze Problem Solution
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Invasive nasal sinus surgery planning is challenging due to the complexity of navigating three-dimensional sinus spaces, especially with blockages, and existing methods are time-consuming and difficult to analyze effectively.
Innovation Solution
A method and apparatus that utilize a CT scan to identify traversable voxels, mark start and termination points, and use algorithms like Dijkstra's to find the shortest path for a catheter, while rendering the external surface transparent to visualize internal structures, ensuring the path's curvature and diameter are compatible with the probe, and allowing for MRI or X-ray scans.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If a physician manually analyzes 3D CT scan images to select the best path for a catheter, then the path selection can be customized and adjusted based on medical expertise, but the process becomes time-consuming and difficult to analyze effectively
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the manual mechanical analysis process with an automated computer-based system that uses algorithms (such as Dijkstra's algorithm) to calculate the optimal catheter path through 3D sinus structures. This substitution of manual mechanical analysis with automated computational methods dramatically reduces planning time while maintaining or improving path selection accuracy.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a digital 3D model (copy) of the patient's sinus anatomy from CT scan data, allowing the computer to analyze and plan the catheter path in the digital replica without requiring time-consuming manual analysis of the original 3D images. This digital copying enables automated processing while preserving anatomical accuracy.
2Adaptability or versatility
If the catheter path navigates through blocked sinus regions, then the treatment can reach previously inaccessible areas, but the path becomes more complicated and harder to plan
Solution Approach 1:
The computer-based path planning system acts as an intermediary between the physician's treatment goals and the complex 3D sinus anatomy with blockages. It processes the anatomical data, identifies navigable paths through or around blocked regions, and presents optimized route options, simplifying the complexity of navigating through obstructed sinus passages.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the parameter of path representation from complex 3D spatial navigation to simplified 2D map representations and standardized algorithmic paths. By transforming the complex 3D navigation problem into computable parameters and visual representations, the system makes complicated paths through blocked regions easier to plan and understand.
3Loss of information
If 3D CT scan images are used to visualize sinus structures, then comprehensive anatomical information is available, but the analysis becomes difficult and time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts the essential anatomical information from comprehensive 3D CT scan data and isolates the specific sinus structures and pathways relevant to catheter navigation. By extracting only the necessary anatomical features and representing them in simplified 2D maps and 3D models, it maintains information completeness while reducing analysis difficulty.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transforms complex 3D anatomical data into 2D map representations and standardized 3D visual models, changing the dimensional representation to make the data more analyzable. This dimensionality transformation preserves anatomical relationships while making the information easier to detect, measure, and plan paths through the sinus structures.
Data Source
AI summary
A method, consisting of receiving a computerized tomography scan of at least a part of a body of a patient, and identifying voxels of the scan that correspond to regions in the body that are traversable by a probe inserted therein. The method also includes displaying the scan on a screen and marking thereon selected start and termination points for the probe. A processor finds a path from the start point to the termination point consisting of a connected set of the identified voxels. The processor also uses the scan to generate a representation of an external surface of the body and displays the representation on the screen. The processor then renders an area of the external surface surrounding the path locally transparent in the displayed representation, so as to make visible on the screen an internal structure of the body in a vicinity of the path.