The HoloSurge Consortium is a collaborative effort uniting 9 hospitals, 3 research facilities, and a commercial partner, all driven by the mission to revolutionize surgical decision-making through real-time holographic navigation. Funded by €8.9M from the EU, this team of European scientists and clinicians aims to enhance perioperative care by integrating AI and multimodal imaging to provide 3D holographic visualization and surgical navigation, ultimately improving outcomes in cancer interventions and reducing surgical risks.
The project aims to advance perioperative care by providing surgical teams with a multimodal 3D holographic tool. This tool will fuse various imaging modalities and integrate a real-time guidance system with point-of-care diagnostics. By offering a unified view, it will enable better, faster, and more objective decision-making, significantly advancing current perioperative care workflows.
There is a lack of real-time data to support clinical decision-making during surgical workflows. Each year, a staggering amount of 310 million major surgeries are performed across the globe (1). Despite many advancements in recent decades, surgical complications continue to occur at too high a rate, ranging from infections or bleeding to organ damage or death (2) .
As a result, 1-4% of surgical patients die and up to 15% suffer from serious postoperative morbidity (1). Every year, ~4.2 million people pass away within 30 days of surgery, thus attributing to a significant 7.7% of all worldwide fatalities (3), ranking just behind ischaemic heart disease and stroke.
Without fused images to guide the procedure, the surgeon’s perception can be inaccurate and imprecise, which can lead to, e.g., vessels not being seen before they are hit, or performing an incomplete tumour resection because some lesions were not properly captured on all non-fused imaging modalities. Moreover, without real-time cell-level data, it is currently impossible to accurately define resection margins and guarantee that no diseased cells remain inside the patient, while in the operating room.
These unmet needs are boldly in display in complex procedures such as liver and pancreatic cancer resection workflows, wherein surgical complications can occur in up to 48% and 60% of patients, respectively (4,5), and if a tumor is located in the pancreatic tail, it is missed in 50% of the cases.
1: Dobson GP. Int J Surg (2020). 81:47-54.
2: Jung Y, et al. Sci Rep (2022). 12, 11251.
3: Nepogodiev D, et al. The Lancet (2019). 393(10170):401.
4: Egeland C, et al. BMC Surgery (2021). 21, 312.
5: Topal H, et al. JAMA Netw open (2022). 5(12):e2248147.
A primary objective of this research project is the practical application of its outcomes, leading towards a market-ready solution provided by HoloCare. They have successfully developed a CE-approved product that transforms CT images to interactive holograms for liver surgery. By utilizing patient-specific holograms generated from CT scans, HoloCare’s technology offers a pioneering approach to surgical preparation. A commercial partner like this is key to translate research into tangible healthcare solutions.
