ClearPoint Neuro extends license and research pact with Philips

ClearPoint Neuro announced further expansion of its worldwide license and research agreement with Philips, a firm in health technology, to add subnuclei segmentation applied to MRI, and potentially CT scans, for use in the operating room. The design goal of the ClearPoint Maestro Brain Model is to enable highly accurate ClearPoint interventions under both MRI and CT guidance by facilitating patient-specific, multi-modal fusion for accurate target identification and trajectory planning. "Extending our software collaboration with Philips beyond the subcortical brain regions in Maestro to include segmentation of subnuclei from MRI is key to our planned expansion into the operating room," commented Joe Burnett, President and CEO of ClearPoint Neuro. "ClearPoint has built our brand based on our unique suite of MRI Guidance hardware and software and with more than 10 years of experience and 6,000 cases, we have learned a lot under challenging conditions. We continue our progression as a platform neuro-navigation company by leveraging what we have learned in the MRI and applying that learning to other surgical arenas in the hospital. This new agreement with Philips will optimize the computational speed of Maestro and enable the fully automatic segmentation of clinically approved deep brain stimulation targets including the globus pallidus internus the subthalamic nucleus the ventral intermedius nucleus and the anterior nucleus of the thalamus . DBS targets planned in the space of a pre-op MRI can be mapped to plans in an operating room surgical environment using other interventional modalities like CT. This will allow surgeons to select which patients benefit from CT compared to MRI based on their presentation, but still take advantage of many unique and valuable features of the ClearPoint platform."