SARA focuses on developing next generation computer-assisted surgery (CAS), including technology for surgical planning, guidance during surgical procedures and training for surgical procedures. CAS relies to a large extent on per-operative visualization of pre-operative imaging or an extracted patient model, enhanced with surgical planning information such as cutting lines, approach angles or tumor resection boundaries. Such visualizations exist today on wall-mounted screens in the OR, but are limited (2D/3D, insufficient overlays, …).
 
SARA will investigate approaches for overcoming these limitations, including the use of Augmented Reality as a modality to overlay 3D rendering of medical imaging together with planning information on top of the real patient’s anatomy.
 
SARA will focus on the necessary technical developments (e.g. pseudo-automatic image segmentation, registration between the medical images and the patient anatomy, context-aware visualizations), but also on user research and on clinical validation in order to develop solutions answering real needs in CAS. SARA will initially target neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery, but will investigate the transfer of the developed methods to other surgical disciplines.

Runtime: 2018 - 2020