Information Engineering Department, University of Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy.
EndoCAS Center, Department of Translational Research and New Technologies in Medicine and Surgery, University of Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy.
Sensors (Basel). 2021 Jun 29;21(13):4450. doi: 10.3390/s21134450.
Cryosurgery is a technique of growing popularity involving tissue ablation under controlled freezing. Technological advancement of devices along with surgical technique improvements have turned cryosurgery from an experimental to an established option for treating several diseases. However, cryosurgery is still limited by inaccurate planning based primarily on 2D visualization of the patient's preoperative images. Several works have been aimed at modelling cryoablation through heat transfer simulations; however, most software applications do not meet some key requirements for clinical routine use, such as high computational speed and user-friendliness. This work aims to develop an intuitive platform for anatomical understanding and pre-operative planning by integrating the information content of radiological images and cryoprobe specifications either in a 3D virtual environment (desktop application) or in a hybrid simulator, which exploits the potential of the 3D printing and augmented reality functionalities of Microsoft HoloLens. The proposed platform was preliminarily validated for the retrospective planning/simulation of two surgical cases. Results suggest that the platform is easy and quick to learn and could be used in clinical practice to improve anatomical understanding, to make surgical planning easier than the traditional method, and to strengthen the memorization of surgical planning.
冷冻手术是一种日益流行的技术，涉及在可控冷冻下进行组织消融。设备的技术进步和手术技术的改进已经使冷冻手术从实验性方法转变为治疗多种疾病的成熟选择。然而，冷冻手术仍然受到基于患者术前图像二维可视化的不准确规划的限制。已经有几项工作旨在通过传热模拟来模拟冷冻消融；然而，大多数软件应用程序不符合临床常规使用的一些关键要求，例如高计算速度和用户友好性。这项工作旨在通过集成放射图像和冷冻探针规格的信息内容来开发一个直观的平台，用于解剖学理解和术前规划，无论是在 3D 虚拟环境（桌面应用程序）中还是在混合模拟器中，该模拟器利用了 Microsoft HoloLens 的 3D 打印和增强现实功能的潜力。该平台已初步验证用于两个手术病例的回顾性规划/模拟。结果表明，该平台易于学习且快速，可用于临床实践以提高解剖学理解，使手术规划比传统方法更容易，并加强手术规划的记忆。
