Surgeons performing complex vascular surgeries as aneurysm clipping could benefit if instantaneous information on blood flow in their surgical field was made available to them. Current technologies that can monitor blood flow at high resolution either engage complex dedicated equipment or rely on administration of contrast agents, both of which are disruptive to the surgical procedure and hence, undesired. We propose a novel method that can noninvasively provide real time live information about blood flow in the surgeon's field of view at the spatial scale of microvessels. This modular optical imaging system (called the SurgeONTM) will integrate with existing surgical microscopes in operating rooms to add the crucial blood flow monitoring capability at a modest cost burden. This complementary blood flow information will be obtained using proprietary and licensed laser speckle contrast imaging technology, and optionally presented to the surgeon in his/her visual field overlaid on the region of interest. Our Phase I effort comprises of engineering the SurgeON system to obtain high resolution blood flow information in real-time and testing the feasibility of its intraoperative use in a surrogate animal model during the surgical occlusion of the middle cerebral artery. Specifically, the SurgeON system will utilize a novel method of high speed processing of laser speckle data on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) reducing the latency with which real time information may be available while optimizing the compromise in spatial and temporal resolution. If successful, we anticipate undertaking a Phase II project, during which we will develop a clinical grade SurgeON system and investigate its performance and utility in the clinic during neurosurgery. While the focus of the Phase I and II efforts is on neurosurgery due to crucial nature of high-resolution blood flow information in the context of the brain, the SurgeON system will potentially play an enabling role in all surgeries by converting a standard surgical microscope to an advanced blood flow measuring microscope.
Surgeons could greatly benefit from the availability of real-time high resolution blood flow information while performing complex surgeries such as the clipping of brain aneurysms. The goal of our project is to develop a modular optical imaging system that will add blood flow monitoring capability to surgical microscopes installed in opeating rooms and provide surgeons this complementary information about their surgical field of view.
