About 10% of the western population will, at a certain stage in their life, be taken to a catheterisation laboratory for angioplasty surgery (stent placement), treatment of an arrhythmia or a heart valve replacement. This percentage is increasing with an ageing population.
Fortunately, most of these interventions can be carried out using minimally invasive procedures that are assisted by smart imaging and sensing catheters that are the ‘eyes and ears’ of the surgeon directly at the point of intervention.