SCAIM Seminar: Purang Abolmaesumi

Our goal is to develop an innovative, robust, intuitive and affordable system for guiding needle insertion into the lumbar spine. Ultrasound imaging will be the basis for guidance before and during needle insertion. The main application is facet joints and epidural/steroid injection for the relief of chronic back pain, and labour/analgesia. The anesthesiologist is expected to use the system to choose a suitable puncture location, insert the needle at an appropriate angle and stop when the needle reaches the desired depth. The goal is to increase the confidence level by enabling an accurate needle placement on the first attempt, and hence reduce complications and pain for the patient. In current practice, the needle insertion is either done blindly, using palpation to choose a puncture site, or under fluoroscopy/CT guidance, which carry a high radiation dose risk to both patient andanesthesiologist. We propose to add real-time ultrasound capability to these procedures and display the ultrasound, pre-procedure CT and needle trajectory to the anesthesiologist. We also propose to incorporate spine statistical atlas information for enhanced interpretation of ultrasound images. I will finish the talk by also overviewing some of our emerging works in cancer interventions using machine learning techniques.