The VOSTARS (‘Video Optical See-Through Augmented Reality surgical System’) medical visor is a head-mounted display (HMD) system that is capable of superimposing the patient’s imaging diagnostics in perfect 3D unison with their anatomy.

The visor also presents a patient’s medical data such as heart rate, body temperature, blood pressure, and breathing rates, conveniently into the surgeon’s field of vision, in a drive to increase accuracy by focusing on the operation and reduce time by never having to look away.

Although Augmented Reality for surgical procedures has been talked about in academic and industrial research since the 1990s, a tool joining a surgeon’s natural perception with patient data has not yet been widely implemented.

The latest developments of photonics components, like the small, high-luminous micro display and the LED optical waveguide, have been crucial to making what was science fiction into reality.

Project coordinator Dr Vincenzo Ferrari, biomedical engineering researcher at the Department of Information Engineering, at the University of Pisa, explains:

“With this state-of-the-art, highly ergonomic visor, we intend to provide all the information required to improve surgery. The primary goal is to reduce not just surgery times, but also the time spent under anaesthetic and the cost involved in any operation.”

“For the patient, this means a saving of 20 minutes every 3 hours of surgery and the guarantee of an extremely accurate intervention,” said Dr Ferrari.

The VOSTARS system works by capturing what the surgeon sees from a head-mounted camera. The system then ‘merges’ this real-time footage of reality with the patient’s medical images, from CT, MRI, or 3DUS scans.

The central processor, using the most advanced registration techniques available for surgical navigation, then presents a real-time hybrid image on the visor ‘dashboard’ for the surgeon.

“Rather than having information on separate screens, all important patient data, like the surgical target in the anatomy, anaesthetic info, breathing and heart rates for example, are integrated instantly into the visor.

 VOSTAR is an Innovation Action project, receiving funding under H2020 in the framework of the contractual Public Private Partnership on Photonics.

Eleven European partners from Italy, France, Germany and United Kingdom are collaborating to achieve its goals.

Using high throughput laser texturing principles, the TresClean project has developed a new technology for the production of self-cleaning sheet metal on an industrial scale.

This technique has been initially employed to create antibacterial surfaces for use in the food production industry - dramatically increasing productivity and reducing costs in factories which process biological food products such as milk, tomato sauce, and yoghurt.

Specifically tailored laser processing of metal surfaces creates a roughened surface, mimicking the surface of lotus leaves, i.e. surfaces where miniature pockets of air are created that minimise the contact area between the surface and a liquid.

In this way surfaces keep themselves clean, without the need for cleaning products or chemicals, in fact repelling liquids such as water, such surfaces are no longer a suitable environment for bacteria to grow.

While this approach may currently exist for specific and expensive plastic components, it is a first for self-cleaning metal.

Metal surfaces are textured using innovative industrial photonics devices: high-average power ultrashort-pulsed lasers are used in combination with high-performance scanning heads by utilising an innovative beam delivery method enabling movements of up to 200 m/s.

Initially aiming its product at machine parts for the food industry TresClean hopes to make a significant impact on productivity: "Vats in milk factories need to be cleaned every 6-8 hours to avoid the exponential growth of bacteria. This hinders usage and therefore affects output" prof. Romoli, project coordinator, said.

 "By saving hours per day in cleaning, it will yield an efficiency improvement stemming from fewer sterilization cycles and less cleaning time within production as a whole. This will also reduce energy consumption as a result of fewer cleaning phases making food production quicker, safer and more profitable".

Professor Romoli sees the long-term possibilities and implications for other sectors: "It is possible that any use of metal that needs to avoid the formation of bacteria will benefit from the TresClean product, such as medical cutting tools, sterile surfaces, dishwashers, or even saucepans".

Coordinated by the Universitá Degli Studi Di Parma, the consortium includes members from Italy, France, Germany, Spain and the UK and has received a grant of €3,363,091 under Horizon 2020 calls.

The projects will receive funding under the SME Instrument and the Fast Track to Innovation strands of the €2.7 billion EIC Pilot, which runs between 2018-2020 under the EU research and innovation programme Horizon 2020. To date, the EIC pilot has already supported 1276 projects with €731.15 million.

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European Innovation Council (EIC) pilot

Horizon 2020

The report results from a PSF Mutual Learning Exercise (MLE) where 12 countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Spain and Turkey) were actively involved and identified lessons learnt and strategies to boost national innovation systems and R&I performance.

Horizon 2020 (H2020), the current FP, is a source of competitive funding that promotes ‘excellence’ and ‘collaboration’ in research, while ESIF leans towards funding ‘cohesion’ by helping countries and regions upgrade their R&I capabilities. The ‘Widening participation and strengthening synergies’ final report identifies key targeted national measures to help Member States participate more and better in the FPs, and build synergies between the two funding instruments so they “don’t miss out” on opportunities to improve R&I performance. Widening participation, the report says, is now a “policy imperative”.

More about the report

The grant will support outermost regions in boosting their research excellence and unlocking their innovation potential, so that they can participate successfully in European R&I projects.

The FORWARD project involves the regional governments of nine outermost regions (Azores, Canary islands, Guadalupe, Guyane, la Reunión, Madeira, Martinique, Mayotte, Saint-Martin), as well as the main R&I actors in each region. FORWARD will carry out an initial analysis of R&I ecosystems and based on the results, it will develop a common strategy and thematic action plans, capacity building activities and networking, as well as activities to link research and policy development. Based on a multi-stakeholder, multidisciplinary and inter-sectoral approach, the project will also support the collaboration and networking between different representatives (academia, industry, government and civil society) at regional and EU level.

The FORWARD project was launched as part of the EU’s strategy for outermost regions.