Highly advanced surgical navigation system to enable faster, more precise and safer surgery

This week, university hospital Klinikum rechts der Isar in Munich, Germany, is the first hospital in the world to operate with Brainlab's Curve™ Image Guided Surgery system. Curve™ is Brainlab's latest generation of image-guided surgery systems. The new technology provides surgeons with better possible guidance and control during surgery enabling faster, more precise and safer interventions.

Curve™ is a highly advanced navigation system which integrates the state-of-the-art software from Brainlab to allow instantaneous 3D visualization during surgery. Importantly, during surgery, ultra-fast image updates to its advanced display screens allow surgical instruments to be navigated immediately by surgeons.

Professor Bernhard Meyer, chairman of the Neurosurgery Department at Klinikum rechts der Isar, commented: "We are extremely happy to be able to use the Curve™ system to support surgery as we believe it can offer advantages for both patients and medical staff. Curve™ is much more user-friendly than any other surgical navigation system we have used before and offers tools that will help improve outcomes for our patients. For example, by having ultra-fast access to updated images in the operating room allows us to make informed decisions on-the-spot and best-possible intra-operative control."

The new navigation platform also has multiple interfaces to support image sharing and enhancement. Its streaming option also enables surgeons to transfer live images to a PC outside the operating room, thus allowing other experts to view surgery as it happens. Brainlab's clinical online network Quentry™ further supports safe and fast sharing of patient data with colleagues around the world via cloud computing. The open architecture of the system facilitates the exchange between clinical users so that patients are able to benefit from combined medical expertise.

Other benefits of the system include a motorized camera that can be adjusted effortlessly at any point during the intervention using steering buttons on the monitor. Plus eight multidirectional wheels with cable deflectors which allow medical staff to rapidly manoeuvre the Curve™ system in and out of the operating room as required.

The Curve™ product development has been extremely guided by clinical user feedback. The result is an intuitive device that powers ultra-fast image updating and session-sharing. Curve™ has been presented to the medical community at congresses in Washington and Rome in October 2011.

Stefan Vilsmeier, CEO and President of Brainlab, commented: "When we started developing Curve™, we set ourselves the goal to overcome the barriers of traditional navigation in the operating room. Our new navigation platform connects the operating room to the outside world through various interfaces. Surgeons can share and enrich data or consult with other medical experts at any time. Image Guided Surgery is becoming now Information Guided Surgery."

To learn more about Curve™ Image Guided Surgery, visit http://www.brainlabcurve.com.

About Brainlab

Brainlab develops, manufactures and markets software-driven medical technology that supports targeted, less-invasive treatment. Core products are image-guided systems and software that provide real-time information used for surgical navigation and radiosurgical planning and delivery.

Brainlab technology drives collaboration between hospitals and clinicians from a wide variety of subspecialties-from neurosurgery and oncology to orthopedics, ENT, CMF and spine & trauma. This integration delivers better access to improved and more efficient treatment.

Founded in 1989, the privately held Brainlab group has more than 5,000 systems installed in over 80 countries. Based in Munich, Germany, Brainlab employs 1,000 people in 17 offices worldwide. http://www.brainlab.com

About University Hospital Klinikum rechts der Isar

The university hospital Klinikum rechts der Isar (on the right side of the river Isar) serves its patients with a highly skilled team of dedicated doctors, nurses, research scientists, and technical assistants. The hospital rechts der Isar is the university hospital of the Technische Universität München (TUM).

The Science of Healing: With a workforce of over 4,200 personnel, the university hospital is a renowned center for the care of the sick, for medical research, and for the teaching of medicine. The hospital rechts der Isar is composed of more than 30 separate clinics and departments treating some 50,000 in-house patients and 210,000 out-patients yearly. The 1,100-bed hospital covers the entire spectrum of modern medicine with state-of-the-art efficiency. Through the close cooperation between health care and research, the latest advances in medical techniques can be quickly integrated into patient treatment procedures.

http://www.mri.tum.de

SOURCE Brainlab AG