Intraoperative neurosurgery on the spinal cord and spinal nerves is performed through narrow access corridors, often only a few millimeters wide. Working in these corridors, a surgeon has limited direct visualization of what lies beneath the surface of the tissue being resected or retracted. Without reliable real-time imaging, the risk of incomplete resection or injury to adjacent neural structures increases.

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Ultrasound is a non-invasive imaging technology that uses high-frequency sound waves to produce images of organs, tissues, and blood flow. The transducer is the handheld part of the system — the piece placed against the body. It converts electrical pulses into sound waves, which propagate into the tissue and reflect back as echoes; the scanner reconstructs these echoes into an image based on their timing and strength. Because the images are captured in real time, intraoperative ultrasound (iUS) can also show tissue movement and blood flow as the procedure unfolds.

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There are several ways to image the surgical field intraoperatively, including intraoperative MRI, neuronavigation based on preoperative scans, and intraoperative ultrasound. Intraoperative MRI is expensive and extends operative time, and navigation built on preoperative images loses accuracy once tissue shifts during surgery. Intraoperative ultrasound is comparatively low cost, widely available, and gives immediate feedback — but conventional probes are often too large to fit the narrow corridors used in neurosurgical approaches.

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The transducer used in this study, the 9007, is small enough to fit those corridors and has been on the US market since 2020. GE HealthCare is now running a study to see how it performs in everyday use, collecting information on its performance and safety during routine surgery. Nothing changes for the patient: no extra tests or procedures, just information gathered from care that was already happening.

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This observational study is sponsored and funded by GE HealthCare Technologies Inc. The N20P6 (9007) transducer is manufactured by BK Medical ApS. Clinical care decisions are made solely by the treating physicians and are independent of the study.