XACT Robotics · Technology overview · Dr. Mohan's take
The pre-analytic phase includes getting the right material in the first place. A lung biopsy has to give the pathologist enough useful tissue to answer the question, and sometimes to support further testing. No amount of work at the microscope can create tissue that never made it into the specimen.
Sometimes we need a little help getting that material. A lung nodule moves as a patient breathes, and a needle's planned path may need to change. XACT Robotics' patient-mounted ACE system combines CT image-guided planning and monitoring with robotic needle placement. Its S-Drive technology lets the operator adjust the trajectory during insertion and steer the instrument along a non-linear path when the target moves.
XACT reports average tip-to-target accuracy of less than 1.7 mm in its company clinical studies of biopsy procedures. That is a measure of needle placement, not a guarantee that a sample will be adequate, a diagnosis will follow, or an outcome will improve. The company's published overall system specification is 3 mm average accuracy, a different measure worth keeping distinct.
We talk a lot about what technology can do after tissue arrives in the lab. But the first question is whether we got the material we needed. Better tools for reaching a moving target are interesting to me because they address that first step. The pathologist still has to assess what came back. Good pathology starts before the slide.
Technology: https://xactrobotics.com/
XACT Robotics reports the clinical-study accuracy figure; company-reported performance is not a guarantee of specimen adequacy, diagnosis or outcome. Not medical advice.
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