Minimally invasive surgery has become popular for various treatments and they are either endoscopic or percutaneous in nature.
The key to the percutaneous procedure requires accurately reaching the target, precisely presenting layout of the needle position, while offering minimal injury to the tissues surrounding the target and organs in the needle path.
Usually ultrasound imaging is used for monitoring and guiding the percutaneous procedure. The drawback is that ultrasound wave can easily create artifacts of needle instrument and its real complete shape and tip are visually limited without 3D imaging.
CT/MR are other methods often used for monitoring and guiding the percutaneous procedure. Because the CT/MR are not real-time imaging tools, the surgeon has to insert the needle instruments without any imaging in a blind way. The CR/MR imaging is only taken before or after the procedure. For the needle tip to reach the deep target inside body, the surgeon has to perform several rounds of needle insertion with increasing depth and CT/MR imaging.
Obviously, the percutaneous procedure needs more effective 3D visual tools to plan, monitor and guide the procedures beside ultrasound, CT/MR. Pari-Path is designed to overcome the problems.
