The CIARTIC Move system is designed to automate repositioning during surgery, can be moved effortlessly building on its fully motorised chassis and touch-sense handles, and has the potential to address staff shortages and work overload in operating rooms
CIARTIC Move enables 2D and 3D CT imaging. (Credit: Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc.)
German healthcare company Siemens Healthineers has received the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for the CIARTIC Move, a mobile C-arm with self-driving capabilities.
The CIARTIC Move is designed to advance and standardise 2D fluoroscopic and 3D cone-beam computed tomography (CT) imaging for surgeons and operating room staff in hospitals and outpatient facilities.
It addresses the needs of orthopaedic, trauma, and spine surgery, and can also be used in thoracic, vascular, cardiovascular, and general surgery, along with urology and pulmonology.
The system can be moved easily due to its fully motorised chassis and touch-sense handles.
It comes with active sensing technology that protects against collision by scanning for obstacles while in transport mode and stopping movement at an obstacle.
The CIARTIC Move system brings consistency to automated workflows and reduces imaging time during operations, said the medical technology company.
Siemens Healthineers North America advanced therapies business surgical therapies vice president April Grandominico said: “With the FDA clearance of the CIARTIC Move, Siemens Healthineers proudly introduces our first self-driving mobile C-arm, which can provide much-needed relief for overtaxed operating room teams by automating and accelerating intraoperative imaging workflows to a previously unseen degree.”
Siemens Healthineers said that its CIARTIC Move can address challenges related to intraoperative imaging due to staff shortages and overloaded surgical teams in the operating room (OR).
The C-arm must be repositioned frequently during OR procedures, to provide surgeons with the exact anatomical views they require.
With conventional mobile C-arms, repeated manual repositioning can be stressful, time-consuming, and vulnerable to mistakes, said the company.
The CIARTIC Move is fully motorised from the C-arm down to its wheels, with self-driving capabilities to automate imaging workflows and drive consistency.
Its automated workflows are said to reduce the time, effort, and workforce capacity required to manually move and position the C-arm.
The system allows storing up to 12 procedure-specific positions along with related imaging parameters, which can be recalled during a procedure using the touch of a button.
Its level of automation helps the surgeon and OR staff easily reproduce images at the desired angle or return the C-arm to park and table positions.
In the preclinical testing, the system showed significant intraoperative time savings of almost 50% during spine surgery over traditional mobile C-arms, said the medical device maker.