Next step in minimally invasive surgery: hybrid image-guided surgery

Abstract

Surgery, interventional radiology, and advanced endoscopy have all developed minimally invasive techniques to effectively treat a variety of diseases with positive impact on patients' postoperative outcomes. However, those techniques are challenging and require extensive training. Robotics and computer sciences can help facilitate minimally invasive approaches. Furthermore, surgery, advanced endoscopy, and interventional radiology could converge towards a new hybrid specialty, hybrid image-guided minimally invasive therapies, in which the three fundamental disciplines could complement one another to maximize the positive effects and reduce the iatrogenic footprint on patients. The present manuscript describes the fundamental steps of this new paradigm shift in surgical therapies that, in our opinion, will be the next revolutionary step in minimally invasive approaches.

Keywords: Augmented reality; Confocal endomicroscopy; Flexible surgical robotic platform; Fluorescence-guided surgery; Image-guided therapies; Laparoendoscopic Single-Site Surgery (LESS); Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES); Surgical innovation; Surgical robotics; Virtual reality.