The Formus Labs team has been working on a 2D-3D project recently which once complete, will allow surgeons to assess the accuracy of their surgical delivery and to accurately plan surgeries in 3D using only 2D images. The new technology will help solve the problem of image registration and reconstruction and will allow the user to extract 3D anatomical and implant information from routine 2D X-Ray images, which can be used in pre and post surgery scenarios.
Formus Labs software engineer Jamie Kydd started developing this technology in late 2020. Jamie says the software has the potential to allow surgeons to know how accurate their surgeries have been.
“The first application of this new technology is to allow surgeons to upload postoperative 2D x-rays or fluoro images to the planner which will let them see how accurately they have executed their plan, something that would typically require a postoperative CT scan that is usually clinically infeasible.”
The relative position of bones and implants in the images can be transformed back to the 3D space in which planning took place, and any number of measures of accuracy can be automatically evaluated.
“The second major application of the software would be to enable the planner to be used on a case with only preoperative x-rays or fluoro images available, so no CT scan is required,” says Jamie.
Formus Labs CEO Dr Ju Zhang says the future real world application for this is to lower the hurdle for accurate 3D pre-operative planning, particularly in markets where CT scans are difficult or expensive to obtain.
He adds that this technology will also be helpful in planning patient rehab.
“Once we create a 3D model post surgery, we can figure out how the joint has changed, and we can look at how the joint’s range of motion and muscle movement has improved, which will be helpful in rehab decisions going forward,” says Ju.
