Exploring how navigation technology may help improve existing treatment workflows in selected ICH cases.
Stroke can change a life in minutes.
A person who was speaking clearly in the morning may suddenly become silent. Someone who walked into the day as usual may suddenly need urgent care. For families, stroke is not an abstract medical term. It is a frightening moment when every decision feels urgent, and every step of care matters.
Brain health is often discussed through prevention, awareness, and early recognition. These are important. But when stroke happens, brain health becomes something more immediate. It becomes the question of how quickly a medical team can understand what is happening, plan the next step, and act with precision.
In some types of stroke, bleeding occurs inside the brain. This is known as intracerebral hemorrhage, or ICH. For patients and families, the medical details can be difficult to understand. But the goal is easier to grasp: doctors need to locate the bleeding, plan a safe path, and treat the problem as carefully and efficiently as possible.
This is where navigation technology can help.Navigation technology is not only about reaching a target. In time-sensitive brain care, it can also improve how existing treatment steps are planned and carried out.
NaoTrac is a surgical navigation robot for neurosurgery, developed to bring machine vision and robotic guidance into the operating room. By supporting image-based planning, streamlined registration, and precise trajectory guidance, NaoTrac helps clinical teams make complex brain procedures more structured, efficient, and repeatable.
In some selected smaller-volume ICH cases, the traditional approach may be to observe and allow the body to gradually absorb the blood over time. This may work for some patients, but recovery is not the same for everyone. The body does not absorb blood at the same pace in every person, and the impact of even a small amount of bleeding can be different depending on where it occurs in the brain.
For patients and families, this uncertainty is deeply personal.
A small amount of blood in the brain is not just an image on a scan. It may affect whether someone can wake up more clearly, move more easily, speak again, or begin rehabilitation with greater hope. It may affect whether a parent, spouse, or family provider can return to daily life.
This is where the idea of precision matters.
When a clinical team can identify a suitable patient, plan a safe path, and remove a small amount of blood quickly and precisely, the value is not only technical. It may help create a better starting point for recovery.
NaoTrac is designed to support this kind of workflow. Through machine vision, facial surface registration, image-based planning, and robotic guidance, it helps the medical team move from imaging to planning, and from planning to treatment, in a more structured and repeatable way.
It can also support familiar surgical tools used for hematoma aspiration, helping physicians remove blood through a planned and guided path. This may make the workflow more intuitive for clinical teams and help reduce the learning curve, because physicians can continue working with tools and techniques they already understand while adding image-guided robotic navigation.
In a recent clinical briefing presented for EANS 2025 Annual Meeting, NaoTrac was used in selected prone-position cases, including a pontine ICH case. The report described a fast and precise workflow, with no peri- or post-operative complications reported, and improvement in the patients’ level of consciousness after treatment.
**Clinical note: In the reported cases, the average registration time was 52 seconds, the average registration accuracy was 0.37 mm, and the average operation time was 71 minutes.
These results should be understood carefully. Stroke recovery is complex, and no technology alone can guarantee recovery. Age, timing, disease severity, bleeding location, and overall medical condition all play important roles.
But the experience shows why workflow matters.
When the brain is injured, time matters. Precision matters. And for many families, even a small step toward wakefulness, movement, or rehabilitation can mean a great deal.
Earlier clinical experience with NaoTrac also supports the role of fast, machine vision-based navigation. In a pilot study* of NaoTrac-assisted external ventricular drainage placement, the system demonstrated fast patient registration and accurate catheter placement, with no bleeding or intraoperative complications reported in the series.
For patients and families, the technical numbers are not the whole story. The bigger story is whether technology can help clinical teams act more clearly, more confidently, and more consistently when every step matters.
No technology can promise recovery. But when a stroke happens, every step that helps the care team act more clearly and confidently can matter.
Protecting brain health means protecting the moments people hope to return to: a conversation with family, a walk outside, a familiar voice, a normal day.
And sometimes, the journey back to those moments begins with precision.