Brainlab ExacTrac Dynamic: Cognex 3D Vision Enables Sub-Millimetric Patient Positioning in Radiotherapy

Brainlab, a global provider of surgical hardware and software headquartered in Munich, developed the ExacTrac Dynamic System — an automated image-guided radiotherapy system that enables precise patient setup and real-time monitoring during radiation treatment. The system tracks the patient position using a thermal surface camera and uses stereoscopic X-rays for internal verification, preventing inadvertent deviation from the planned position and ensuring radiation is precisely directed at cancerous tissue. To achieve the required sub-millimetric accuracy at all times, Brainlab needed a 3D camera that was both incredibly accurate and very fast. The company chose Cognex 3D-A5000 area scan cameras for the task. The 3D-A5000 captures high-resolution 3D point cloud images using LightBurst technology — delivering a full field-of-view 3D point cloud image as fast as 200 milliseconds, constructed from over 1.5 million 3D data points to accurately reconstruct surface features. The camera captures point clouds of the patient surface simultaneously with thermal information and stereoscopic X-ray images. The system continuously monitors patient positioning with sub-millimetric accuracy during high-precision treatments, and aligns three image datasets to an online patient position information dataset for radiosurgery positioning. The solution is now in use at medical facilities worldwide, treating conditions including brain metastases, and prostate and spine tumors. The system enables medical professionals to perform high-precision radiotherapy procedures with accuracy that protects healthy cells while targeting malignant tissue.