Digital Twins as a tool for surgical navigation: from concept to implementation

Description

Recent technological advances in the field of surgery have focused on the development of minimally invasive techniques, intra-operative imaging and real-time navigation, advances that have led to safer and more effective surgeries. However, other areas remain less developed, particularly the monitoring of the patient’s state and the updating of the pre-operative plan according to the intervention’s progress. Nowadays, the surgeon remains in charge of picturing the current state of the patient, integrating multiple — and usually isolated — sources of data, such as images, vital constants and clinical history. In addition, the human body is a highly dynamic environment, which causes pre-operative planning to quickly become invalid, due to multiple factors such as tissue and organ deformation, navigation inaccuracy or intra-operative incidents.
In response to this challenge, digital twins (DT) emerge as a promising solution. These models, initially conceived for predictive maintenance of industrial machinery — are highly realistic digital simulations updated in real time, which offer detailed digital description of their monitored entity, computing their inner state at all times. DTs applied to surgery could offer realistic representation of the patient’s inner state in real-time, updated by data acquired and integrated during the intervention.
The upcoming webinar is part of the DIM3D project, funded by the Aid for Technological Centers Cervera within the consortium formed by Vicomtech, Idonial, Leitat and AIN. It will address current topics related to the implementation of digital twins in surgery, covering their conceptualization, examples related to simulation, and potential pathways for their implementation to provide real-time support during surgical procedures.

Addressed to...

This event is aimed primarily at researchers from R&D&I departments of companies in the healthcare sector, universities and technological centers involved in surgical simulation, planning and navigation procedures. It is addressed to technical profiles, predoctoral and postdoctoral researchers and all those agents in the sector motivated by competitive improvement through cutting-edge technological solutions.

Program

14:30 - 14:35: Introduction

14:35 - 15:05: Applying the Digital Twin Paradigm to the Healthcare System. Dr. Stélian Camara dit Pinto, Post Doctoral Fellow at Long Island University

15:05 - 15:35: VIDAA: Unlocking LAAO Excellence with Flow Simulations. Ainhoa M. Aguado, Co-Founder VirTest

15:35 - 16:05: SlicerSOFA: Enabling Real Time Simulation in Medical Image Analysis and Visualization. Dr. Rafael Palomar, Research Scientist, Intervention Centre, Oslo University Hospital and Associate Professor, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

16:05 - 16:35: Digital Twins as a real-time surgery support system. Amaia Iribar, Researcher of Digital Health & Biomedical Technologies, Vicomtech

16:35 - 16:45: Last remarks and Webinar Closing. Dr. Valentine Cazaubon, Researcher of Digital Health & Biomedical Technologies, Vicomtech.