One out of 20 men over age 55 will experience a triple abdominal aortic aneurism (AAA) – an enlargement of the lower part of the aorta – and the risk doubles with every decade of life.

Traditionally, the aneurism is fixed through either open surgery or endovascular procedure. Both require lengthy hospital stays and recoveries. While the endovascular procedure is less invasive, it emits high doses of radiation -- both to the patient and the surgical team -- for the surgeon to guide wires and devices to the proper places.

Yet now, with Cleveland Clinic Innovations’ 71^st spinoff company, Centerline Biomedical, fixing an abdominal aortic aneurism is becoming less risky and far less radiation is involved. Centerline is developing and commercializing a radiation-minimizing system for endovascular procedures based on the research from Cleveland Clinic’s Heart and Vascular Institute and the Lerner Research Institute.

Centerline’s surgical navigation provides the surgeon with a navigation tool, making the procedure more efficient and accurate.

“The technology uses a 3D image of the actual patient’s vasculature using sensors and guide wires,” explains Centerline CEO Brian Fuller. “It’s like a GPS system for the vasculature. It will show the patient’s vascular structure, rotate, move around, look up and down the vessel. It’s a more efficient procedure and it’s not radiation-based.”

The elimination of high doses of radiation is particularly innovative. “This is a way to perform surgery on the vascular system that is minimally invasive,” says Fuller. “The average AAA procedure has 15 times the radiation than a CAT scan, which has 30 times more radiation than an X–ray. It’s also really bad for the surgeon and staff.”

Matthew Eagleton, a surgeon with the Clinic’s Heart and Vascular Institute who heads Centerline’s medical advisory board, is pleased with the technology and its potential. “This technology excites me in that it is an adjunct to our current imaging systems and may allow for improved visualization of the vasculature, easier manipulation within that anatomy with three-dimensional pictures, and potentially will reduce the amount of fluoroscopy needed – thus reducing radiation exposure,” he explains. “It may allow for more complex procedures to be performed more easily.”

Fuller says Centerline expects to complete design by the end of the year and have a prototype to the FDA by the end of 2016. The technology is expected to hit commercial markets by mid-2017.