Description du projet
En marche vers l’adoption clinique finale de FUTURA
La chirurgie par ultrasons focalisés est une approche chirurgicale non invasive révolutionnaire, reposant sur les effets thermiques et la cavitation mécanique. Elle présente toutefois certains inconvénients, notamment des limitations en termes d’exactitude, de précision et de répétabilité, ainsi qu’une forte dépendance vis-à-vis des compétences médicales. Le projet FUTURA2020, financé par l’UE, entend faire progresser l’intégration de la plateforme robotique polyvalente et flexible développée au cours du projet européen FUTURA, entrepris dans le cadre du 7e PC, afin de surmonter ces limites dans des applications cliniques de routine. Grâce à la robotique, au guidage par l’image, à l’apprentissage automatique et aux techniques de navigation, cette plateforme peut être validée sur des modèles animaux de grande taille afin de démontrer la robustesse, l’adaptabilité et la précision élevées de la thérapie, et d’attirer les investisseurs nécessaires pour soutenir les prochaines étapes, vers des essais pilotes sur l’homme et la phase de certification.
Objectif
FUTURA2020 aims to exploit the 3-year S&T results of the FP7 European project FUTURA (www.futuraproject.eu) which has been flagged up as a success story and was presented during the European Robotics Forum 2017. FUTURA2020 represents a fundamental step in the path for bringing the robotic platform for Focused Ultrasound Surgery (FUS) developed in FUTURA to the user hands and to the patient bed. FUS is the paradigmatic example of non-invasive surgical approach: it relies on thermal effects and mechanical cavitation produced by focused US beams, without skin incisions or ionizing radiation. However, FUS suffers from an important drawback, i.e. the limited flexibility in therapy delivery, which narrows the applicability to non-moving and non-essential organs, mainly under MR imaging. Considering robotics, image guidance, machine learning and navigation techniques as the tools to overcome these limitations, FUTURA has developed a versatile and flexible robotic platform able to guarantee high robustness, adaptability and precision of therapy, as well as improving safety and acceptability of multifunctional robotic platforms in the surgical theatre. FUTURA2020 has the concrete objective of increasing the TRL of the developed platform from 5 to 7. The FET Launchpad support will be devoted to perform preclinical in-vivo tests on animals and to activate an industrial oriented process More specifically, the in-vivo trails will boost the credibility of the results obtained up to now: they will solicit interest also from investors, who are needed for supporting the next developments towards human pilot trials and certification. In this endeavour, the FUTURA2020 coordinator will gather the best skills also available in the previous FUTURA Consortium, with ad hoc tasks. Even if the FET Launchpad support is financially limited, it is the most appropriate and timely action for making a not incremental step for the final clinical adoption of FUTURA
Champ scientifique
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinesurgery
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesnuclear physics
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringrobotics
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learning
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesacousticsultrasound
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
CSA - Coordination and support actionCoordinateur
56127 Pisa
Italie