RadiQual Surgery: winner of the Venture Challenge Fall 2016
At the Dutch Life Sciences Conference, Chretien Herben, director of the LifeSciences@Work Accelerator, announced RadiQual Surgery as winning team of the 16th edition of the Venture Challenge. RadiQual Surgery has developed a worldwide unique product called Logi-Knife that enables surgeons to make use of high quality diagnostic imaging data for real-time 3D surgical navigation during their surgical procedures. Using Logi-Knife, surgeons are able to perform the perfect cut to cure cancer.
According to the Venture Challenge Jury the technogical innovation of RadiQual Surgery addresses the high medical need to optimize the success of tumor operations. Radical Surgery presents a missing link in today’s cancer surgery. The fact that several clinical trials are already running and 20 surgeons positively used the new system with 50 patients ultimately lead to the jury’s winner decision. The RadiQual Surgery Logi-Knife has been developed at the Netherlands Cancer Institute – Antoni van Leeuwenhoek by surgeons for surgeons, resulting in an intuitive and clinically relevant product. The team exists of professor Theo Ruers, engineer Jasper Nijkamp and surgeon Koert Kuhlmann.
The RadiQual Surgery Logi-Knife provides the surgeon with a patient specific 3D anatomical map and real-time visualization of their surgical tools on this anatomical map. The technology allows to follow tumor movement during the surgical procedure and in this ways leads to continuous real time visualization of the surgical instrument in relation to tumor tissue and surrounding healthy tissue.
For most cancer types, surgery is the only curative option. Although complete removal of the tumor is essential to prevent cancer recurrence, surrounding healthy structures should be spared to avoid complications and to maintain quality of life in cancer patients. Preoperative diagnostic imaging plays a very important role to assess the feasibility of surgery, and to decide on the surgical approach. However, during the actual surgical procedure the imaging information is not used, simply because the surgeon is not able to interact with the images.
In 2016, surgeons still rely on the same senses as 100 years ago; what they can see and what they can feel. Unfortunately, this shortcoming results in incomplete resection rates of up to 20% of the cases and long term complication rates of up to 35%. RadiQual Surgery has recognized this essential shortcoming and is ready to deliver their innovative solution.
“The Logi-Knife is applicable in a broad range of surgical procedures, such as rectum, colon, liver, lung, and breast cancer”, says Jasper Nijkmap, co-founder. “According to surgeons the Logi-Knife will help to cure more patients, reduce side effects, and assists in complex decision making during surgery”.
In November 2015, professor Theo Ruers explained this new surgery technique on Dutch television in 'De Wereld Draait Door' (Dutch).
The other participating teams were STENTiT, GEN-X, AGILeBiotics and BIOND.
