Transcript
ReachMD Announcer:
Welcome to ReachMD. This medical industry feature is titled “New 3D MRI Technology Offers Enhanced Visibility During Fibroid Surgery,” featuring Dr. Tamatha Fenster, gynecologic surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian and director of innovation and technology at The Weill Cornell Medicine Fibroid and Adenomyosis Center. This program is a production of New York-Presbyterian with world-class doctors from Columbia & Weill Cornell Medicine.
Dr. Fenster:
Fibroid surgery is really complex and challenging, because fibroids can grow in any plane on the uterus. The current challenge of 2-dimensional MRIs are finding all the different layers of fibroids. It’s critical for a surgeon going into these cases to have a really comprehensive understanding of where all these fibroids are and other anatomical structures.
So over the last 3 years, what we have been working on is smarter MRI technology, created at Weill Cornell Medicine in conjunction with the engineering labs. And what we’ve been able to do is train our technology to automatically take 2-dimensional MRIs, recognize fibroids, and create a 3-D image that we can use in the operating room. We’re able to rotate these projections 3-dimensionally and understand where the fibroids are in relation to other structures: the bladder, other blood vessels, the ovarian blood supply. So if I can put smarter MRI adjacent to a robotic consult and seamlessly transfer from one image to the next, it allows me to have a very efficient, safe surgery, and ensure that I’ve removed all fibroids.
We were so fortunate at Weill Cornell Medicine to be able to perform a pilot study of smarter MRI technology. The patients were very complex; they had multiple fibroids throughout the uterus. At the 6-month follow-up, we found that surgeons that did not use smarter MRI technology had residual fibroids, whereas surgeon who had used the smarter MRI technology did not have residual fibroids.
The results of smarter MRI showing that these patients had decreased residual fibroids is critical, because one of the huge setbacks of fibroid surgery is regrowth. We’re talking almost 30% to 40% of patients come back to their gynecologist for additional surgeries and additional symptoms within 5 years. So showing that we can get a more comprehensive removal of fibroids the first time is really groundbreaking.
We want smarter MRI all over the world so that women everywhere can make informed decisions about their surgical care.
ReachMD Announcer:
If you missed any part of this discussion or to find other programs in this series, visit ReachMD.com/industryfeature. This is ReachMD. Be part of the knowledge.
