Open Source Surgery Systems

Modern surgery requires a team of doctors, nurses, assistants … and computers. As the Canada Research Chair in Computer-Integrated Surgery, Dr. Gabor Fichtinger explores the potential for computers to assist and enhance surgeries and medical interventions for precision and more effective results. He studies a wide-range of applications such as medical imaging, image computing, scientific visualization, surgical planning and navigation, robotics, and biosensors to integrate them into systems for clinical use.

Fichtinger also specializes in robot-assisted, minimally invasive percutaneous medical interventions. Entering through the skin, robots can assist, under image guidance, in the detection and treatment of cancer. He is also the director of the Laboratory for Percutaneous Surgery (Perk Lab) which supports a multidisciplinary approach to researching the translation of computer-integrated surgery systems and technologies for clinical trials.

The Perk Lab also develops free, open source software platforms, providing advanced computational resources for rapid development of computer-integrated surgery systems. This allows translational researchers to take ideas to the operating room with minimal effort and cost. In a typical Perk Lab system, 99.99% of the code is free, open source software, while all novelty and intellectual property is compressed into a wafer thin layer (0.01%) of the code, thus ensuring unprecedented performance, speed, and efficiency in bench-to-bedside development. Perk Lab platform resources have been used in over 90 countries on five continents.