Image-Guided Interventions

Emphasis

Overall emphasis is on the engineering of novel image-guided interventions to improve outcomes of interventional procedures. In addition, emphasis includes technologies that expand needed procedural access for individuals otherwise excluded by disease characteristics, co-morbidities, and other parameters.

Additional Emphasis

Image-guided interventions may use supporting technologies relevant to other NIBIB-supported program areas, including but not limited to:

• Various imaging technologies
• Biosensors and Physiological Detectors program
• Image Processing and Visual Perception program. Examples include image-guided interventions for non-invasive procedures, minimally invasive procedures, open surgery, and radiation treatment such as:
• guidance for focused ultrasound treatment
• navigation for minimally invasive needle biopsy
• intraprocedural delineation of tumor margins

Note that image-guided interventions may support operator-directed, non-robotic procedures as well as robotic procedures.

Areas of priority include development of real-time or near real-time novel image-guided technologies, with robust procedural direction or a robust receiver operating characteristic curve. In addition, cost-efficient technologies, appropriate for low resource settings, and/ or applicable to multiple types of interventions are strongly encouraged.