• Toshiaki Kotani, Shigeyuki Nagaya, Masaru Sonoda, Tsutomu Akazawa, Jose Miguel T Lumawig, Tetsuharu Nemoto, Takana Koshi, Koshiro Kamiya, Naoya Hirosawa, and Shohei Minami.
• Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Seirei Sakura Citizen Hospital, Chiba, Japan. tkotani@wa2.so-net.ne.jp
• Spine. 2012 May 20;37(12):E752-6.

Study DesignProspective trial of virtual endoscopy in spinal surgery.ObjectiveTo investigate the utility of virtual endoscopy of the spine in conjunction with spinal surgery.Summary Of Background DataSeveral studies have described clinical applications of virtual endoscopy to visualize the inside of the bronchi, paranasal sinus, stomach, small intestine, pancreatic duct, and bile duct, but, to date, no study has described the use of virtual endoscopy in the spine.MethodsVirtual endoscopy is a realistic 3-dimensional intraluminal simulation of tubular structures that is generated by postprocessing of computed tomographic data sets. Five patients with spinal disease were selected: 2 patients with degenerative disease, 2 patients with spinal deformity, and 1 patient with spinal injury.ResultsVirtual endoscopy software allows an observer to explore the spinal canal with a mouse, using multislice computed tomographic data. Our study found that virtual endoscopy of the spine has advantages compared with standard imaging methods because surgeons can noninvasively explore the spinal canal in all directions.ConclusionVirtual endoscopy of the spine may be useful to surgeons for diagnosis, preoperative planning, and postoperative assessment by obviating the need to mentally construct a 3-dimensional picture of the spinal canal from 2-dimensional computed tomographic scans.

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