US Patent Issued to Covidien on March 18 for "Surgical item detection system for in vivo foreign object detection by magnetic flux leakage" (Colorado Inventor)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,251,171, issued on March 18, was assigned to Covidien LP (Mansfield, Mass.).

"Surgical item detection system for in vivo foreign object detection by magnetic flux leakage" was invented by Edwin M. Maynard (Frederick, Colo.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A detection system for detection of surgical implements within a body of a patient, includes a magnetic field generator configured to generate a magnetic field, a sensor configured to sense a distortion in the magnetic field in response to an approximation of the sensor to a surgical implement, a processor, and a memory. The memory includes instructions stored thereon, which, when execut...