Even as recently as the early 1990s, often the only way to reach the actual operation site in heart surgeries was by making large incisions. With new techniques for minimally invasive surgery, a large number of operations can now be performed under the skin. “This technology is very popular because the patient recovers faster and hospital stays are correspondingly shorter,” Frank Sauer, head of the Imaging and Visualization department in Siemens’ American R&D-lab in Princeton, states. “Minimally invasive means the gentlest possible treatment.”
Eight out of ten operations today already can be performed using minimally invasive techniques. However, this method poses particular challenges for doctors: They must find their way around the patient’s body without having a free, direct field of vision. Consequently, imaging procedures that give the doctor a view inside the patient’s body are an important basis for the success of minimally invasive methods. “Our objective was to offer the doctor a three-dimensional overall view of the anatomy and to incorporate it in the operating process.” Sauer and his team accomplished this by developing special imaging techniques that show with greatest precision the position of surgical instruments inside the body.