15. Januar 2015

Ende des Jahres 2014 fand am ICCAS ein weiterer wichtiger Workshop zu Teilprojekten des Verbundprojektes OR.NET – sichere und dynamische Vernetzung in Operationssaal und Klinik – statt. Im Focus der Teilnehmenden aus Industrie und Forschung standen die IT-Integration und Vernetzung im Operationssaal.

Der zweitägige Workshop, dessen Leitung Max Rockstroh innehatte, beschäftigte sich umfassend mit der Modellierung von medizinischen Geräten und Softwaresystemen nach internationaler Normung. Im Vordergrund standen die Vorbereitung der Implementierung der Demonstratoren sowie die Unterstützung von Standardisierungsmaßnahmen.
An dem seit Ende 2013 am ICCAS entwickelten klinischen Demonstrator sollen zum Ende der Projektlaufzeit im August 2015 beispielhafte Implementierungen zur sicheren und dynamischen Integration und Vernetzung von Medizinprodukten – mit und ohne Echtzeitanforderungen untereinander und mit IT-Systemen im OP-Umfeld – möglich werden. Diese sollen anschließend von Klinikbetreibern als auch von Ärzten und dem OP-Personal evaluiert werden.

05 January 2015

The current ICCAS Annual Report is now online available. Interested persons receive detailed information about the particular projects – structured by the research areas of ICCAS – and the achievements and results of the scientists in 2014.

Link – ICCAS-Research Report 2014

16 December 2014

On 8th December 2014, Professor Jürgen Meixensberger opened the ICCAS status seminar and the advisory committee meeting 2014 with a welcome speech to the employee and invited guests, which included the ICCAS-board- and advisory board members from science and industry as well as the Vice Dean of the Leipzig Medical Faculty Professor Ingo Bechmann. Afterwards he handed over to Professor Andreas Melzer, who has been Director of the ICCAS since September 2014. Prof. Melzer presented intentions for the further development of the ICCAS-concept, which includes a stronger interaction with other medical research institutions and a growth of cooperation with the industrial sector. Furthermore, he explained the inclusion of his research area MR-guided Focused UltraSound (MRgFUS) in the ICCAS research landscape. Prof. Bechmann praised the research of ICCAS and assured support by the Leipzig Medical Faculty for future projects. ICCAS also received much appreciation for the achievements already made from the clinics of the Leipzig University Hospital.

This was followed by a round of presentations of the project leaders of all ICCAS research fields. Much has been achieved in 2014, but the year 2015 holds new challenges. Projects such as Standards, Patient Simulation Systems and Defect Classification of the Cervical Spine came to an end and new projects were presented, e.g. ONCOCONTROL – which will continue the successful development in the field of information- and management systems in tumor therapy. The guests were informed about the research state of selected projects on the basis of life-, multimedia-, Powerpoint- and poster presentations. The diversified event which offered many issues for discussion about benefits and applications of high-tech systems, not only in the operational area, ended with the meeting of the ICCAS advisory committee. Every year, its highly qualified experts from science and industry evaluate the research of ICCAS.

Thanks to all guests and employees for their successful contributions, constructive discussions, ideas and suggestions, which ICCAS will take in its 10th year of existence.

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Am Freitag, dem 19. Dezember 2014, findet um 9:00 Uhr im ICCAS-Seminarraum die Auftaktveranstaltung zu einem Kolloquium mit Vertretern der Fraunhofer Institute statt. Erster Vortragender dieser Vorlesungsreihe wird Dipl.-Ing. Steffen Tretbar sein. Der Leiter der Abteilung „Medizinischer Ultraschall“ am Fraunhofer Institut für Biomedizinische Technik (IBMT) beleuchtet das Thema “Neue Perspektiven des medizinischen Ultraschalls“.

Am Dienstag, dem 09.12.2014 um 17:00 Uhr, spricht ICCAS-Direktor Prof. Andreas Melzer im „Klinisch-Neurowissenschaftlichen Kolloquium“ des Universitätsklinikums Leipzig (UKL) zum Thema „MR – geführter fokussierter Ultraschall zur Behandlung neurologischer/psychiatrischer Erkrankungen: Stand der Technik und Ausblick“.
Die Veranstaltung, deren Gastgeber die Klinik und Poliklinik für Neurochirurgie des UKL ist, findet im Haus 4 (Innere und Operative Medizin; Neurologie; Radiologie), im Seminarraum 0015/0016 in der Liebigstraße 20 statt.

Link zum Flyer des Veranstaltungsprogramms im Wintersemester 2014/15

29 October 2014

In the middle of October, Professor Heinz U. Lemke launched the ICCAS workshop Standards and Model Guided Medicine. Renowned scientists, such as Kevin Claeary, research professor and bioengineer at Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation in Washington DC and Emanuele Neri, professor for radiology at Pisa University Hospital, Prof. U. Meyer, from the company MT2IT and ICCAS-director Professor Andreas Melzer participated in this international event. The agenda included themes which are important for the further development of information management and system integration in the digital operating room. The participants exchanged their knowledge about technical frame conditions and approval issues regarding the implementation of concepts in the field of model-based automation. Further topics of discussion were the integration of standardizations in future projects and the role of ICCAS within the lighthouse project OR.NET.

22 October 2014

It was only recently, that Dr. med. Patrick Dubach from Inselspital Bern finished his activities as guest researcher at ICCAS. Now, he gave Bernhard Glaser (MAI) a warm welcome during his study visit at Bern University Hospital and ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research.

Glaser carried out a study in the scope of his newly developed training system for those handling surgical instruments in the operation room. The so called “Nosco Trainer” was tested and afterwards rated in the framework of a multi-center study by the OR-personnel of the local ENT-department. The feedback of the probands was consistently positive. Thus, there is a need for such a training system in the education of Swiss-OR-staff. At ARTORG Center, Glaser was provided an insight into the work of the research group „Image Guided Surgery“.

The open mindness of the Swiss colleagues towards the project leads to the hope for further cooperation. A publication of the current study results is in progress.

Since 1st September 2014, Prof. Dr. Andreas Melzer has been director of the Innovation Center Computer Assisted Surgery. He was appointed professor of computer-assisted surgery at the Faculty of Medicine at Leipzig University. With Professor Melzer ICCAS has gained a renowned and very experienced scientist in developing medical technologies and robotics for surgery, radiology and image-guided therapy.

Professor Melzer studied dentistry and medicine in Mainz and Tübingen. He qualified in Dentistry in 1989 and as Medical Doctor in 1993. During his professional career in clinic and science he has gained extensive experiences in the development of medical technologies and surgical instruments. Specialist subjects of the versatile researcher are interventional radiology and magnetic resonance imaging, image-guided robot technology and the further development of Nitinol devices. More than 100 patents and over 300 publications are based on his inventive talent. He is co-founder of several start-up companies in the medical technology business and consultant for major vendors on medicine. He also serves as organizer and chairman of various medical conferences.
Professor Melzer is the founding director of the Institute for Medical Science and Technology (IMSaT) of the Universities of Dundee and St. Andrews, Scotland. Since 2006, he has been holding the Chair of Medical Technology and leads the scientific work on Magnetic Resonance (MR)-guided intervention and therapy. At ICCAS he will research on MR-guided Focused UltraSound (MRgFUS) as a new method, which exemplary enables the implementation of a computer-assisted, image-guided diagnose and therapy.

14 October 2014

At the 48th Annual Conference of the German Society for Biomedical Engineering (DGBMT 2014), several ICCAS employees contributed interesting lectures.

Dr. Kerstin Denecke (DPM) spoke about the development of apps supporting the mobile health care. The lecture was met with great enthusiasm. Jens Meier reported about “Standardization of ENT Oncological Anamnesis and Evaluation using Levenshtein Distance Measure”. At a special CURAC-session, Marianne Maktabi (MAI) submitted her research findings on concepts and requirements for an advanced clinicwide Operating Room Control Center. Dr. Claire Chalopin (DPM) gave a poster presentation on “Vascular structure tracking in intraoperative 3D ultrasound data during brain tumor resection”.The poster contribution of Max Rockstroh (MAI) dealt with the “Approach to the detection of the use of medical devices based on the analysis of video stream”.

This year conference which took place at Hannover Congress Center, primarily addressed the increasingly complex environment of biomedical engineering by involving more clinical topics. The participants established and strengthened contacts and enjoyed instructive looks beyond their own research borders through the wide range of issues.

01 October 2014

Philipp Liebmann’s professional career at the ICCAS began with the project work on “Software interfaces for modular model-based surgical assistance systems” in 2007. There, the computer scientist (MSc) dealt with extensions of the DICOM-standard in the area of standardization for surgery. Since 2011, he worked under the direction of Prof. Heinz U. Lemke on further developments of standardizations for the clinical environment in the research field “Standards” (STD). One main achievement of the STD-group in which he was significantly involved was the establishment of an Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) – domain “Surgery” as a prerequisite for the improvement of the electronic data exchange between IT systems in healthcare. New IHE profiles for surgery followed. At conferences and through his work as secretary of the DICOM Working Group 24 Liebmann ensured the international presence of the ICCAS-projects.

Philipp Liebmann took leave of the ICCAS-team on 30th September, before the research initiatives of the STD-group will expire at the end of this year. His new workplace is located in one of the leading companies for high end display solutions for medical imaging. The ICCAS thanks its colleague for his long-standing commitment and wishes him all the best for the future.