Safer neurosurgeries begin with stronger data sets

PreOperative Performance started with an idea: What if every patient and clinician entered treatment knowing with certainty that they’re working from the best-possible MR data?

Wait a second, you might say. Isn’t that already the case? 

Well, yes and no. 

The Journal of Neurosurgery estimates that, globally each year, more than 13.8 million neurosurgeries are performed. It’s a clinical specialty where many procedures are high risk.

While some cancers, such as meningiomas, originate on the layer of tissue that surrounds the brain, can be accessed directly, other cancers are often surrounded by healthy tissue. Removing the diseased tissue or delivering a therapeutic treatment may require healthy tissue to be traversed, making the margin for error narrow. 

Unlike muscle or skin, neural tissue doesn’t heal or repair itself. If errors are made, their effects can be permanent, profound and debilitating, diminishing quality of life for patients and leaving neurological teams demoralized. 

“Over many conversations with neurosurgeons and healthcare professionals, we realized that neurologists and neuroradiologists have very limited time, with significant hours devoted to staying current in a fast-moving clinical speciality,” says Fergal Kerins, founder and CEO. “They want a standard standard, but they don’t have time or bandwidth to build it themselves.” 

So how do you make safer neurosurgery?

Safer neurosurgeries begin with a stronger data ecosystem

PreOperative Performance was founded to support neurological communities in their mission to deliver personalized, high-quality care. Standardizing MR data for interventions could lead to greater consistency and more standardized approaches that would contribute to better outcomes for patients, and provide the tools for detailed retrospectives that help neurological communities learn and iterate. 

Our configurable phantom instruments can perform as harmonization tools to support imaging studies, interrogate the quality of diffusion datasets, and detect bad data and sources of error. Our goal is to provide tools that can characterize errors in neurosurgery and support mitigations against their effects on patients, clinicians and healthcare systems.

Close-up of the Phantom X, which can help neurosurgical teams establish ground truth for their data sets, contributing to safer neurosurgeries.
Close-up of the Phantom X, which can help neurosurgical teams establish ground truth for their data sets, contributing to safer neurosurgeries.

The Phantom X is the first PreOperative Performance product to create anisotropic diffusion modules with fully parameterized bifurcations and intersections. Used in a research or clinical setting, it can help establish ground truth on the quality, accuracy and dependability of any preoperative image scan ahead of surgery or treatment.

Validated data may also expand diagnostic capability from medical imaging. It could expand and accelerate diagnosis, improve surgical decision making, reduce error rates, and potentially give patients a higher quality of life. 

Better access to data-driven tools may also lead to lowered costs to healthcare systems and institutions. “Being accurate is in everyone’s best interest,” says Kerins.

About PreOperative Performance

Based in Toronto, Canada, we are a seed-stage company with unique, proprietary technology that supports MR scan accuracy. Our vision is for every patient and clinician to enter treatment with the confidence that they’re working from the best-possible MR data. In the long run, we want our products and programs to help accelerate the rate of successful outcomes from neurology.

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