INCORPORATION BY REFERENCE

The present application claims priority from Japanese patent application JP-2019-174600 filed on Sep. 25, 2019, the content of which is hereby incorporated by reference into this application.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to a surgery support apparatus and a surgical navigation system that support a surgeon using a medical image during surgery.

Description of the Related Art

There has been known a surgical navigation system that supports a surgeon so that surgery can be safely performed by integrating treatment plan data created before surgery with data acquired during surgery to guide a position and posture of a surgical tool, etc.

More specifically, for example, the surgical navigation system is a system that presents a position of a surgical tool to the surgeon to support surgery by superimposing and displaying position information in a real space of various medical devices such as the surgical tool detected using a sensor such as a position measuring apparatus on a medical image acquired before surgery by a medical image capturing apparatus such as an MRI.

One of problems to be solved by the surgical navigation system is to present an appropriate intervention site to the surgeon. The intervention site is a body surface portion at the time of incising a body surface of a subject, that is, a patient using a surgical tool to perform treatment on a tissue or an organ inside a body corresponding to a subject of surgery, and it is necessary to set an appropriate position and size according to a position of a site to be treated. Conventionally, when a surgeon intervenes in a body of a patient during surgery, an intervention site has been determined based on an experience of the surgeon with reference to a medical image. However, when the surgeon has little experience, an appropriate intervention site matching the purpose of the surgery may not be properly determined, and the position is shifted or a range is excessively small. In this case, correction such as expansion of the intervention site is performed again after the intervention, and a physical load on the patient due to the excessive surgery time increases.

In particular, in surgery such as brain surgery involving resection of a skull and craniotomy such as removal of a brain tumor, it is necessary to comprehensively determine a resection site (intervention position) based on various factors such as a size of the tumor, a distance to the tumor, and a location of a brain area where damage needs to be avoided, and it is necessary to appropriately set a body position of the patient according to the resection site. An unskilled surgeon may not be able to properly determine the resection site and may require additional resection of the skull after resection. However, no technology has been proposed to address such a problem.

Meanwhile, in recent years, a technology for improving accuracy of a medical image using an artificial intelligence algorithm such as deep learning has been developed. For example, JP-T-2019-500110 (the term “JP-T” as used herein means a published Japanese translation of a PCT patent application) discloses a technology for determining intracranial bleeding, etc. from a medical image.

The technology using the artificial intelligence algorithm disclosed in JP-T-2019-500110 indirectly contributes to surgery support by, for example, improving the accuracy of determining the surgical site. However, the technology merely improves image accuracy, and does not provide support information combined with a surgical navigation technology. In contrast, the present applicant proposes a technology for improving accuracy of a surgical tool position presented by surgical navigation by predicting a position of a target organ after an intervention using an artificial intelligence algorithm learning images before and after the intervention as teacher data. In this technology, it is possible to solve a problem that the target organ is deformed by an intervention of the surgeon, for example, incision, and accuracy of a surgical tool position presentation function by surgical navigation is reduced, for example, a problem caused by a so-called “brain shift” in which a shape and a position of the brain are changed by craniotomy in brain surgery.

However, changes in the shape and position of the organ after the intervention differ depending on the position of the intervention and the body position of the patient. However, this technology does not provide support information for the intervention position thereof. In some cases, the intervention position needs to be flexibly changed in consideration of a condition of the patient (for example, a type of body position to be taken), etc. There is a possibility that a sufficient surgery support function may not be obtained only by the above-mentioned artificial intelligence algorithm. In addition, to create an artificial intelligence algorithm that can predict the shape and position change of the organ after the intervention in consideration of the intervention position and the patient body position, a huge amount of teacher data is required.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Therefore, an object of the invention is to provide a technology for predicting an appropriate intervention site for surgery in a surgical navigation system.

To solve the above-mentioned problem, a surgery support technology of the invention creates an artificial intelligence algorithm learning an intervention site by analyzing data before an intervention and intervention site data for an object, and predicts and presents an intervention site based on data before the intervention using the learned artificial intelligence algorithm.

Specifically, a surgery support apparatus of the invention is a surgery support apparatus for supporting an intervention in an object in a living body by displaying an image, characterized by including a prediction data generation unit that uses a learned artificial intelligence algorithm learned using image data including the object before the intervention or data obtained by processing the image data and information related to an intervention position on a surface of the living body to predict an intervention position in the living body to be treated, and outputs prediction data.

In addition, the invention provides a surgical navigation system including the surgery support apparatus. The surgical navigation system includes the surgery support apparatus, a display apparatus that displays a medical image, and a position measuring apparatus that measures a position of a living body to be treated and a position of a surgical tool. The surgery support apparatus causes the display apparatus to display information related to an intervention position output by the prediction data generation unit and a position of the surgical tool measured by the position measuring apparatus.

According to the invention, accuracy of an intervention site can be improved by predicting an appropriate intervention site with respect to a surgery subject, and presenting the predicted intervention site to a surgeon. As a result, a physical load on a patient can be reduced.

