Enhanced Delivery Ecosystem for Neurosurgery in 2020 (EDEN2020)

Contact Persons

Dr. Thomas Wendler (wendler@tum.de)

Abstract

EDEN2020 (Enhanced Delivery Ecosystem for Neurosurgery) aims to develop a gold standard for one-stop diagnosis and treatment of brain disease by delivering an integrated technology platform for minimally invasive neurosurgery. A team of first-class industrial partners (Renishaw plc. and XoGraph ltd.), leading clinical oncological neurosurgery team (Università di Milano, San Raffaele and Politecnico di Milano) lead by Prof. Lorenzo Bello and leading experts in shape sensing (Universitair Medisch Centrum Groningen) under supervision of Prof. Dr. Sarthak Misra join our chair in a challenging endevour. The project is coordinated by Prof. Dr. Rodriguez y Baena, Imperial College London. His team provides the core technology for the envisioned system, the bendable robotic needle. During the course of EDEN2020 this interdisciplinary team will work on the integration of 5 key concepts, namely (1) pre-operative MRI and diffusion-MRI imaging, (2) intra-operative ultrasounds, (3) robotic assisted catheter steering, (4) brain diffusion modelling, and (5) a robotics assisted neurosurgical robotic product (the Neuromate), into a pre-commercial prototype which meets the pressing demand for better and less invasive neurosurgery. Our chair is focusing on the imaging components (i.e. (1) and (2)), targeting the real-time compensation of tissue movement and accurate localization of the flexible catheters at hand. We will further extend the findings of the Europen Project FP7 ACTIVE, in which we successfully combined pre-operative MRI with intra-operative US through deformable 3D-2D registration, making us most qualified for this role.