US Patent Issued to INTUITIVE SURGICAL OPERATIONS on July 1 for "Systems and methods for using tracking in image-guided medical procedure" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,343,094, issued on July 1, was assigned to INTUITIVE SURGICAL OPERATIONS INC. (Sunnyvale, Calif.).

"Systems and methods for using tracking in image-guided medical procedure" was invented by Vincent Duindam (San Francisco), Federico Barbagli (San Francisco), Timothy D. Soper (San Jose, Calif.), Tao Zhao (Sunnyvale, Calif.) and Caitlin Q. Donhowe (Mountain View, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method comprises tracking a set of optical fiducials positioned on a reference portion of a medical instrument. The medical instrument includes an elongated flexible body with a distal end and a rigid proximal body which includes the reference...