Patent Document ID: 20050228256
Application ID: 11079898
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A system for selectively disabling a surgical instrument operating in a surgical site of a region of interest of a living subject, wherein the surgical instrument has a distal end portion, comprising: a. means for noninvasively placing a number, M, of fiducial markers in an anatomic space of the region of interest of the living subject; b. means for pre-operatively measuring a location of each fiducial marker in the anatomic space of the region of interest of the living subject; c. an imaging acquisition device for pre-operatively acquiring an image volume from the region of interest of the living subject, the pre-operatively acquired image volume containing the image of at least two of M fiducial markers; d. a probe operatively coupled with the surgical instrument for intra-operatively monitoring a location of the distal end portion of the surgical instrument in the anatomic space of the region of interest of the living subject; and e. a controller operatively coupled with the measuring means, the imaging acquisition device, the probe, and the surgical instrument, respectively, and configured to perform the steps of: (i). identifying a centroid of each fiducial marker in the pre-operatively acquired image volume; (ii). registering the identified centroid of each fiducial marker in the pre-operatively acquired image volume to the pre-operatively measured location of the corresponding fiducial marker in the anatomic space so as to determine a registration transformation; (iii). mapping the intra-operatively monitored location of the distal end portion of the surgical instrument in the anatomic space onto a corresponding location in the pre-operatively acquired image volume by an inverse of the registration transformation; and (iv). generating a signal to disable the surgical instrument when the mapped location of the distal end portion of the surgical instrument is substantially close to a boundary of the surgical site of the region of interest in the pre-operatively acquired image volume.