Surgical interventions are complex procedures involving a comprehensive team of healthcare professionals both before, during and after the surgery itself. A central part of this is clinical decision-making, which is a continuous process involving the whole surgical team who – based on the best available evidence, clinical experience, and the patient's individual circumstances – make informed decisions about the best course of action for the patient. An important input to this process is medical images, but even though advancements in medical imaging have greatly improved surgical outcomes, the interpretation of such images towards deciding a specific course of action remains highly subjective. Also, different modalities provide complimentary information that can be difficult to combine. It is therefore essential to provide a comprehensive picture of the patient’s anatomy that is shared and unambiguously understood by all in the assigned team. This could ultimately reduce the risk of surgical complications.
The HoloSurge project, which is funded by the EU research programme Horizon Europe, addresses this challenge by developing a navigation system for treatment of cancers in the liver and the pancreas. The system combines
- pre- and intraoperative imaging,
- automatic image segmentation and fusion using artificial intelligence (AI),
- interactive, three-dimensional holographic visualization and
- real-time cell-level cancer diagnostics.
The solution will provide surgical teams with an unmatched holistic view of the patient’s anatomy and pathology in real time at point of care both before and during surgery. HoloSurge is led by the Norwegian company HoloCare AS and brings together 14 partners from 10 different European countries.
