Nowadays, thanks to the technological progress, diagnostic imaging is also useful during surgical operations as a guide.
In the field of medullary tumor surgery, MRI and CT images have been united with good results, as two specialists of Humanitas, Doctor Maurizio Fornari, Supervisor of Neurosurgery, and Doctor Marco Grimaldi, Supervisor of the Neuroradiology Service, explained in an interview for Tg2’s program “Medicina 33”.
“We have to credit Doctor Francesco Costa for the idea of putting these two images together. He demonstrated that it is possible to navigate at the same time both the spine bones and the flesh”, Doctor Fornari said.
“Each operating room has devices (in particular, CT tools) that allow the study of bones. Thus, surgeons can be very precise in positioning the tools they need to intervene on the bone. The great innovation is using MRI images taken before the surgery, together with CT images acquired during the surgery”, Doctor Grimaldi also said.
What is the advantage of this fusion?
“The advantage is centering the operating field precisely on the lesion, so that the surgery becomes minimally invasive and really effective in removing tumors (if present)”, Fornari explains.
