Percy and the magical rug Once upon a time in a small village, there lived a young boy named Percy. Percy was a curious and adventurous boy who loved exploring new things. One day, while playing in the woods, he stumbled upon a beautiful rug half-buried in the ground. As Percy brushed off the dirt from the rug, he noticed that it had intricate patterns and vibrant colors. It was unlike any rug he had ever seen before. Little did Percy know that this rug was no ordinary rug - it was a magical rug that could grant wishes.

Company Profile: Brainlab

Brainlab is a global medical software and hardware company dedicated to improving patient outcomes by catalyzing access to and the consistency of medical treatments. The company is headquartered in Munich and has 25 locations worldwide.

“Brainlab’s extensive software and hardware products and services have enormous potential to accelerate the advancement of the focused ultrasound field,” said Foundation Chairman Neal F. Kassell, MD. “They have great utility both for manufacturers of focused ultrasound devices and research sites.”

We recently spoke with Brainlab’s CEO and Foundation Council member, Stefan Vilsmeier, about how the company works with researchers and clinicians to advance technologies like focused ultrasound.

How was Brainlab started?
I founded Brainlab in 1989 in Munich, Germany. As an autodidact in software programming, I wrote a book on 3D graphics at the age of 17, laying the foundation for the company. With more than 50,000 copies sold, the book became a bestseller in this category.

In 1989, I enrolled at the Technical University of Munich to study computer programming, but the nature of my burgeoning business in computer-assisted medical technology left little time for theory. While still in the first semester, I founded Brainlab from the proceeds of my book.

As CEO, I have been the driving force behind the company’s innovation and customer focus from the very beginning.

What are your intentions with Brainlab?
I have always had one goal: to improve medical care and the quality of life for as many patients as possible.

Tell us about your company structure: ownership, lead executives, and their roles.
Brainlab is a privately held company. Brainlab’s current executive board consists of:

• Stefan Vilsmeier (myself), Founder and Chief Executive Officer
• Rainer Birkenbach, Chief Technology Officer
• Jan Merker, Chief Operating Officer

Over the past decade, Brainlab acquired several innovative companies in the software and medical technology sectors.

In general, what is the current status of your company?
Brainlab develops software and hardware for radiotherapy and radiosurgery as well as for the fields of neurosurgery, including functional neurosurgery, ear, nose, and throat (ENT) and craniomaxillofacial surgery, spine surgery, and trauma procedures. Our products focus on image-guided surgery and radiosurgery, digital operating room integration technologies, and cloud-based data exchange.

Worldwide, 6,300 hospitals use Brainlab technology, including the top neurology and neurosurgery hospitals in the US. There are approximately 14,500 of our systems installed in 120 countries worldwide. We employ around 2,200 people from 85 different countries, including about 800 engineers in research and development.

Tell us about your business and how it fits into the field of focused ultrasound.
Focused ultrasound comprises several techniques that all share a common goal: treating patients through a minimally invasive approach. Brainlab can make an important contribution through its leading role in the field of image-guided surgery and navigation. For example, techniques such as MR-guided focused ultrasound require accurate and patient-specific targeting. Brainlab offers Elements, a state-of-the-art platform with advanced tools, such as fiber tracking and anatomical mapping, to assist neurosurgeons in surgical targeting.

Which health conditions or diseases is your technology used for?
Brainlab has been at the forefront of healthcare technology for over 30 years, providing innovation in several areas:

• Oncology, particularly radiotherapy and radiosurgery
• Navigated surgical procedures, particularly in craniomaxillofacial, ENT, orthopedics, spine, trauma, and neurosurgery
• Functional neurosurgery, particularly in the treatment of movement disorders and drug-resistant epilepsy

What do you find most promising about the focused ultrasound field?
It is fascinating to see that modulating ultrasound can achieve different effects, ranging from small and well-defined lesions to opening the blood-brain barrier. Focused ultrasound provides a promising approach for longstanding unmet clinical needs that traditionally require invasive methods.

How can Brainlab help the field of focused ultrasound?
Essentially, Brainlab excels at developing and improving clinical workflows through seamless technology integration. By collaborating with the industry in the field of focused ultrasound, we can accelerate the development of efficient and outcomes-based workflows.

What are the benefits of your technology over other companies?
Brainlab has a strong foundation in medical software. The company is committed to getting the most out of patient data, starting with imaging studies. Extracting meaningful information from data and making those insights available to clinicians in a way they can easily use has led to our current leadership position in the clinical community. But that’s not all. We believe in the value of an integrated technology ecosystem that includes surgical navigation technologies, robotics, and digital tools (such as mixed reality viewers).

Education and dissemination of knowledge within the clinical community is also a goal that Brainlab is pursuing. The acquisition of Level Ex in 2020 is evidence of that. Level Ex develops medical computer games to improve the clinical skills of physicians and uses its expertise and products to improve the interaction between data, technology, and people. This is crucial for successful digitization in the healthcare sector.

What has been your most notable lesson learned over the years?
There is never a completely right or wrong decision. You have to make sure that the decision you made is the right one in the end. Even if you fall down with a bleeding nose, get up and keep going.

How do you partner with other companies?
In order to leave no potential for the optimal treatment of patients untapped, at Brainlab we work closely with our strategic partners, such as innovative and renowned companies from our industry and beyond. Together, in close collaboration, we seek to discover and produce the next generation of technology and treatments to improve outcomes for patients.

Is there anything else we should know about your company?
At Brainlab, we digitize medical workflows from diagnosis to therapy, and our innovative ecosystem forms the basis for modern healthcare technology. We help healthcare providers build three-dimensional patient-specific data models that are structured, mapped, and aggregated with industry-leading artificial intelligence. This builds the basis of our navigation system for the human body. With the help of our navigation systems, clinicians can safely remove brain tumors, precisely place screws in the spine, neuromodulate the brain, and irradiate breast tumors with millimetric precision.

Our robotics and mixed reality technologies and expertise allow users to connect and innovate between the digital and physical worlds. In addition, Brainlab technologies power the collection of structured long-term data and medical registries. Through the neuroscience of play, Brainlab advances clinical training and education, promoting the adaptation of technological advances and creating digital models of complete interventions. Our digital ecosystem is an open interface and also forms a framework for third parties to accelerate innovation in other clinical areas.

Brainlab and Magic Leap Partner in Digital Surgery

Munich, September 25, 2018—Brainlab today announced a strategic development partnership with Florida-based Magic Leap, a developer of proprietary spatial computing solutions that help users enrich their real world experience by integrating digital content within their physical world.

Under an exclusive agreement, Brainlab will market a version of Magic Leap’s technology platform that will redefine how surgeons and other clinicians visualize and access medical imaging data. A state-of-the-art operating system will combine Brainlab data management, cloud computing, visualization and data pre-processing software with Magic Leap’s spatial computing and experiential platforms. Open to third parties interested in developing medical spatial computing applications in the fields of surgery, radiotherapy and other critical medical interventions, the combined solution from Magic Leap and Brainlab will transform the art and science of patient care.

“Truly unique and first-of-its-kind, our operating system will enable anyone to integrate multi-dimensional virtual data into real-world clinical workflows, driving precision, productivity and an intuitive user experience,” said Stefan Vilsmeier, Founder and CEO of Brainlab. “We will deploy mixed reality and machine learning to capture vital data that will allow physicians to optimize their procedures for every patient.”

This spatial computing development ecosystem will support management, visualization, augmentation and navigation of diagnostic imaging data for a broad range of clinical procedures. The first release will enable planning and simulation of interventional procedures in an office setting, which will be expanded upon quickly to include a next-generation mix of virtual and physical worlds for the operating room, radiotherapy treatment room, intensive care room and radiology suite.

“The combination of Brainlab and Magic Leap can be meaningful in empowering physicians to improve the quality of interventional solutions,” said Rony Abovitz, Founder and CEO of Magic Leap. “Together we hope to positively impact the lives of millions of people around the world.”

About Brainlab

Brainlab develops, manufactures and markets software-driven medical technology, enabling access to advanced, less invasive patient treatments.

Brainlab technology powers treatments in radiosurgery as well as numerous surgical fields including neurosurgery, orthopedic, ENT, CMF, spine and trauma. Founded in Munich in 1989, Brainlab has over 12,300 systems installed in over 100 countries.

Downloads

• Press Release - Magic Leap Partnership Announcement (PDF)
• Press Release - Magic Leap Partnership Announcement (DOC)
• Brainlab Mixed Reality Press Images HighRes (ZIP)

Links

• Brainlab Mixed Reality Overview
• Magic Leap Company Page

Visualize Patient in 3D

Add a new dimension to patient data. The Brainlab Mixed Reality Viewer 1 is a technology that produces hyper-realistic 3D patient data, enabling healthcare professionals to review patient data in an interactive and collaborative environment while gaining a high level of spatial anatomic orientation and awareness.

The Mixed Reality Viewer offers the benefits of a quick-to-produce, interactive digital environment that vividly displays patient anatomy, pathology and spatial relationships in 3D. When used in combination with Brainlab Elements, users also gain access to automatically segmented anatomical structures.

By incorporating Mixed Reality Viewer software and dedicated viewing hardware into the surgical planning review process, medical professionals can resize, zoom in and even walk through specific parts of a patient’s anatomy, enabling them to gain important additional insights that might not be visible on a 2D screen.

The Mixed Reality Viewer is designed to enable multiple users to collaborate during the same session and even log on from different locations. Using this approach, surgical teams can easily discuss and review plans.

The Mixed Reality Viewer has been installed in over 110* hospitals around the world

96% of Brainlab customers claim to be more prepared for surgery after using the Mixed Reality Viewer

Brainlab customers agree that reviewing patient-specific 3D models with the Mixed Reality Viewer allows for easier identification of anatomical structures compared to viewing them on a standard 2D screen

*As of October 2023

**Based on a 34-person customer survey

Little did Percy know that this rug was no ordinary rug - it was a magical rug that could grant wishes. Excitedly, Percy decided to take the rug home and show it to his parents. When Percy shared the news, his parents were just as amazed as he was.

Add a new dimension to surgery with mixed reality

They suggested that Percy should try making a wish and see if the rug really had magical powers. Without hesitation, Percy closed his eyes tightly and made a wish to be able to fly like a bird. Suddenly, he felt a gentle gust of wind lifting him off the ground. Astonished, Percy opened his eyes to find himself soaring through the sky, marveling at the breathtaking view below. Over the following days, Percy experimented with the magical rug and discovered that it could make all his wishes come true. He wished for incredible adventures, meeting new friends, and even getting the chance to visit faraway lands. Every wish was granted, filling Percy's life with excitement and joy. However, as Percy grew older, he started realizing that relying on the magical rug for his happiness wasn't fulfilling. He began questioning the true meaning of his wishes and their impact on his personal growth. With a heavy heart, Percy decided to part ways with the magical rug and pursue a life of purpose and fulfillment without relying on shortcuts. Although it was difficult, Percy understood that true happiness came from his own actions and the relationships he built, rather than relying on a magical rug. From that day forward, Percy embraced the challenges of life and strove to make a positive impact on the world around him. Although he missed the adventures and wonders the magical rug brought, he knew that the journey of self-discovery and growth was ultimately more rewarding. In the end, Percy learned an important lesson about the power of self-reliance and how external sources of happiness can never truly replace the satisfaction that comes from within..

Reviews for "A magical legacy: The impact of Percy and the magical rug on future generations"

1. Jane - 1/5 stars - I was really disappointed with "Percy and the magical rug". The story seemed to drag on, and I never felt invested in the characters or the plot. The writing style was plain and lacked creativity. Additionally, I found the magical rug element to be underdeveloped and without much purpose. Overall, I struggled to finish this book and wouldn't recommend it to others.

2. Mark - 2/5 stars - "Percy and the magical rug" didn't live up to my expectations. The story had potential, but it fell flat in execution. The characters felt one-dimensional and their actions were predictable. The plot lacked depth and complexity, making it difficult to stay engaged. While the concept of a magical rug sounded interesting, it wasn't explored in a compelling way. Overall, I found this book to be a forgettable read.

3. Sarah - 2/5 stars - I was left feeling underwhelmed by "Percy and the magical rug". The writing style didn't capture my attention and I found it hard to connect with the characters. The pacing was off, with some parts dragging on while others felt rushed. The magical rug aspect of the story was introduced abruptly and didn't blend well with the overall narrative. Unfortunately, this book didn't leave a lasting impression on me.

4. Michael - 1/5 stars - I really struggled to get through "Percy and the magical rug". The writing felt amateurish and the dialogue was awkward. The characters lacked depth and their motivations were unclear. The plot was predictable and didn't offer any surprises. The magical rug aspect felt forced and lacked explanation. Overall, I was highly disappointed with this book and wouldn't recommend it to others.

From page to screen: The potential for a Percy and the magical rug movie