Use of computers in surgery aim of study

Press, 31 March 1989, Page 10

Use of computers in surgery aim of study

By

SARAH SANDS

A Christchurch biomedical engineer will leave for London next week to study advances in computer graphics that will enable surgeons to see a life-like image of the bones beneath a patient’s flesh. '

Dr Richard Fright, of the Christchurch Hospital department of medical physics and bioengineering, has been awarded a two-year overseas research fellowship by the Medical Research Council.

The fellowship allows Dr Fright to continue research into computer imaging to build threedimensional images from “slices” provided by a C.T. scanner. "The scanned data is as close as we can get noninvasively to gathering all the information about the insides of a. person,” said Dr Fright. The imaging meant that

plastic surgeons would be able to see the detail" of the bone and simulate the surgery to see what the outcome would be, he said.

’’lt also means that the person is happy with the result before the surgery.”

Another main use would be in making accurate titanium plates for patients who had had part of their skull removed, such as after an accident, said Dr Fright. The present method for making the plates was to turn the C.T. scan film into photographs, stick these to cardboard, cut them out and glue them together to make a model on which to shape the plate, he said. “With computer imaging you can take all the co-ordinates and put them into a readable form for a machine such as a laser to cut out the model.”

With an accurate plate for a person’s skull, the operation went more

smoothly and was more successful, he said. “We get the exact data so we know the plate will fit.”

This work was under way at Christchurch Hospital, but studying it overseas was important because it would save duplicating the work in New Zealand, said Dr Fright. The department of medical physics and bioengineering at University College, London, where Dr Fright will study, is experimenting with using many small, fast computers for the imaging. Other centres use a big, slow computer working overnight to produce the three-dimensional images, he said.

“Small computers are the sort of thing we could afford to do here. They can recreate the image very quickly and allow you to move the image to view it from any angle,” said Dr Fright.