US Patent Issued to KARL STORZ on Jan. 13 for "Generating suture path guidance overlays on real-time surgical images" (North Carolina Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 13 -- United States Patent no. 12,521,177, issued on Jan. 13, was assigned to KARL STORZ SE & Co. KG (Tuttlingen, Germany).

"Generating suture path guidance overlays on real-time surgical images" was invented by Kevin Andrew Hufford (Cary, N.C.) and Zachary S. Leonard (Durham, N.C.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A system and method using computer vision to assist surgical suturing includes capturing digital images of a treatment site in a region of patient anatomy and displaying the image in real time on an image display. Computer vision techniques are used to determine the edges of tissue to be sutured. The system determines target needle entry and exit points at desire...