New Brain-Mapping Tech at Baptist Health Miami Neuroscience Institute Provides Most Detailed Imaging for Neurosurgeons 

Pioneering brain-mapping software, developed by Omniscient Neurotechnology, allows neurosurgeons to visualize and understand a patient’s neural networks – those that control complex functions such as language, movement, and cognition — prior to performing life-changing brain surgery.

This technology provides multi-dimensional, digital layouts that help neurologists and neurosurgeons better understand which areas of the brain are responsible for certain functions, explains Michael McDermott, M.D.., a neurosurgeon and the chief medical executive of Miami Neuroscience Institute, part of Baptist Health. The Institute has started implanting this state-of-art technology.

(Watch video: Michael McDermott, M.D.., a neurosurgeon and the chief medical executive of Miami Neuroscience Institute, and John Candela, neurosurgical systems consultant at the Institute, describe and demonstrate the latest brain mapping technology. Video by George Carvalho.)

“Most patients and families are frightened about the prospect of having a brain operation,” said Dr. McDermott. “If we can extend the patients’ lives, they think it’s a miracle, but it’s not really. It’s really a product of good training and lots of experience. When I came to Baptist Health Miami Neuroscience Institute, what I needed as a cranial surgeon was a modern image-guided system with the ability to overlay fiber tracks for motor, sensory, speech, and vision.”

With Omniscient Neurotechnology’s two primary platforms, Quicktome and Infinitome, physicians are given different perspectives that show and track the functional and the structural connectivity of the brain of each patient. These detailed and layered images provide Dr. McDermott and his team an improved and safer method to engage the brain and maximize a patient’s needs.

“We knew the anatomy of the brain through decades of research,” explains John Candela, neurosurgical systems consultant at Miami Neuroscience Institute. “But this is the first time that we’re truly seeing the actual networks of the brain. The patient comes in, and they’re going to have a battery of radiological images taken to get to the tumor and resect it without hitting any of the networks, hitting into the main vessels, or hitting any of the other structures that we need to stay away from.”

An estimated 700,000 Americans are living with a primary brain tumor. And an estimated 90,000 people will receive a primary brain tumor diagnosis by the end of 2022. Dr. McDermott is one of the world’s leading experts in meningioma, the most commonly diagnosed primary brain tumor in adults. And although they evolve in the meninges, the layers of tissue that surround the outer part of the brain and spinal cord, they are commonly described as brain tumors

Dr. McDermott adds that for the patient, this new imaging technology is very much like a typical MRI. It just takes a few more minutes.

“Omniscient Neurotechnology is one component of new technologies we’re bringing to Miami Neuroscience Institute to allow us to provide the most specialized care for the patients,” said Dr. McDermott. “The new equipment here, high-intensity focused ultrasound, for example, and image-guided surgery, is a big advance for us.”