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| Virtual reality and image guidance software--Screenshot courtesy of Surgical Theater |
Surgical Theater managed to get FDA clearance and CE marked--ahead of closing its first official venture financing. Now it's garnered a $9 million Series A round to back its virtual reality and image guidance software that offers a 3-D view of brain surgery before, during and after procedures.
The technology uses a Vive virtual reality headset that's marketed by electronic device maker HTC, which led the financing alongside Shanghai Creation Investment Management.
"Virtual reality will forever transform the way we experience the world around us," said HTC CEO Cher Wang in a statement. "Our collaboration with Surgical Theater is an exciting opportunity to pioneer the medical use of virtual reality, with a remarkable application in the highly specialized field of neurosurgery that enhances patient care could help save lives."
The company's Surgical Navigation Advanced Platform provides surgeons real-time visualization as well as modeling and manipulation capabilities via the virtual reality headsets. These offer views that aren't available from conventional surgical image-guidance systems.
"We are providing dynamic visualization capabilities in real time, allowing surgeons to perform a real-time 'fly through' of the surgical pathway, establish multiple views, rotate and interact with the navigation image," said Surgical Theater co-founder and CEO Moty Avisar. "Surgical Theater's Virtual Reality based surgery guidance tools are already revolutionizing the way that neurosurgeons use medical imaging for surgery and the education of surgical residents."
The Surgical Theater technology has been used in more than 900 cranial cases for patients with tumors and cerebrovascular disorders. The 3-D virtual reality system is already installed in U.S. research and teaching hospitals including the University Hospitals Case Medical Center, University Hospitals Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital, The Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mayo Clinic and NYU Langone Medical Center.
- here is the announcement