The Markets for Image-Guided Surgery: Location, Location...and Guidance

The promise of image-guided surgery (IGS), according to "US Markets for Image-Guided Surgery Products," a report just out from Windhover Information's Medtech Insight division, has always been to improve the clinical utility and cost-effectiveness of chosen treatment protocols. The report defines the segment as any technologies that enable the intraoperative use of a representation of patient anatomy, obtained via either direct imaging techniques or computerized methods. Imaged-guided surgery has the potential to improve long-term patient outcomes, minimize surgical trauma, and reduce hospital-length-of stay, because precise targeting results in better removal of diseased tissues and minimal damage to adjacent tissue structures. For example, in arthroplasty procedures of the joint--a rapidly growing segment of the orthopedics industry--image guidance enables smaller tissue-destroying access incisions.

Overall, image-guided surgical systems have been slow to make inroads into the market. In a health care environment of cost containment, IGS products face adoption hurdles as expensive, adjunctive technologies...