On 4 October, the no. 1 Eurostars Projects of the past 3 years were presented with an innovation award during the Innovation Expo 2018 in Rotterdam.

DEAM and its project partners have received this Innovation Award for the Eurostars Mariana project. This project is a European collaboration between businesses and knowledge institutions: Sintef and Ceetron from Norway, University of Cork and Smart Electronics Ltd from Ireland and TUDelft from the Netherlands.

The Mariana team is developing an advanced system for taking biopsy samples through the lungs from the deepest and most difficult to reach regions, at the exact location where an X-ray indicates abnormal activity. The conventional procedure is to reach these areas with needles, from the outside and between the ribs. The Mariana system prevents complications with the conventional procedure, such as a collapsed lung, and reduces the chance of oversights (and therefore incorrect diagnoses) when taking the biopsies.

In a Mariana procedure, the specialist navigates steerable tubing to the right place via a patient specific virtual lung model, which is aligned with the lungs of the patient on the operating table. The end of the tubes is carefully followed by an electromagnetic tracking system and projected onto the virtual model. For the specialist it is like gliding through the lungs, to exactly the right location.