Precision Incisions

His team of young tech whizzkids draws inspiration from a drawing of a robot made by Leonardo da Vinci in 1495 — and from work done more than five centuries later at M.I.T.'s Artificial Intelligence Lab. From those sources, 58-year-old Tech Pioneer Tom Alexandris, CEO of Z-Kat in Hollywood, Florida, is bringing computer technology into the operating room, including image-guided software and robots that interact like humans.

One of Z-Kat's products, Acustar, allows neurosurgeons to connect the digital world to the real, by linking 3-D software images of the brain to the patient's actual head and mapping those connections with submillimetric accuracy. Once the target is identified the surgeon can use instruments tracked by a camera or a robotic arm to do the surgery. This type of digital operation will save three or four hours per brain tumor procedure, says Vanderbilt University Neurosurgery Department Chair George Allen, one of Acustar's co-inventors. "The technology opens up an entire new way of doing surgery," says Allen. "It is more accurate, less invasive and patients recover more quickly." Other eventual uses of the technology include spine, hip and knee surgery and more accurate deep brain stimulation to control the tremors of patients with Parkinson's disease and the ability to pinpoint — for the first time — changes in tumor size after chemotherapy.

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