Augmented Reality for Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement
Centerline Biomedical is proud to receive its 2nd federal small business grant – funded by the NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute – on August 11th focusing on applying our IOPS technology to heart valve replacement, coupled with further developing our augmented reality (AR) technology! The IOPS platform technology is being applied to transcatheter aortic valve replacement, commonly called TAVR. Centerline targets TAVR as a market that would potentially benefit greatly from its innovative IOPS technology, which uses medical imaging and electromagnetic tracking to guide devices through a patient’s vascular system. The key goal of this SBIR grant is to push the state of the art by leveraging Centerline’s IOPS with augmented reality wearable technology to allow surgeons to conduct TAVR procedures that would otherwise not be feasible in the context of traditional endovascular procedures. The advent of augmented reality has significantly opened up new possibilities in healthcare, and more specifically, minimally invasive surgery; augmented reality IOPS essentially gives surgeons “x-ray vision,” allowing them to see as if they were looking through a patient’s skin and organs. This grant award represents a significant step forward in bringing IOPS to the forefront of healthcare technology.
The possibilities of using IOPS integrated with augmented reality are exciting! From left: a surgeon wearing a Microsoft HoloLens augmented reality display during simulated surgery; an example of what a surgeon might see looking at the arteries inside a patient; an example of a heart valve being placed with augmented reality IOPS.
TAVR is a minimally invasive procedure to replace a narrowed aortic heart valve that fails to open or close properly (i.e. aortic valve stenosis). TAVR can relieve symptoms experienced by those with aortic valve stenosis and improve survival of those not eligible for surgery due to risk of complications or other factors.
This work is part of our continued mission of expanding the IOPS technology into a wide range of endovascular procedures such as peripheral vascular interventions, electrophysiology studies, along with other structural heart diseases such as mitral valve stenosis therapies, which will benefit a broader population.