A kick-off event on November 22, 2017 launched a joint project for the development of novel navigation systems for the treatment of vascular diseases, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

In the three-year research project at the Lübeck site, vascular surgeons, radiologists, computer scientists, mathematicians, and physicists work together with state-of-the-art methods on innovative procedures for “Combined navigation for endovascular therapy of the main artery” (Nav EVAR). The focus of the development is a procedure that significantly reduces the burden on the patient and the practitioner through X-rays and contrast agents.

The researchers from Fraunhofer MEVIS are contributing their expertise in the fields of segmentation, visualization, registration, and data fusion. The representation of the target and risk structures of the vascular system is an essential part of intervention planning. To assist the physician during the procedure, the current position of the catheter and the virtual vessel lumen are visualized in real time using glass fiber tracking.

The launch event for the Nav EVAR project was attended by representatives of the following institutions:

• Clinic for Surgery, UKSH Lübeck
• Clinic for Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, UKSH Lübeck
• Fraunhofer MEVIS, Bremen/Lübeck
• Institute for Robotics, University of Lübeck
• Institute for Biomedical Optics, University of Lübeck
• Medizinisches Laserzentrum Lübeck GmbH
• VDI Technologiezentrum GmbH, Berlin/Düsseldorf