An MR-compatible neurosurgery robot designed with space technology just got closer to the clinic.

On Thursday, IMRIS announced it had acquired the MR-compatible surgical robot NeuroArm, while also inking a deal with one of its backers, the Canadian aerospace company MacDonald Detwiler and Associates, to develop a commercial version of the technology.

Winnipeg, Manitoba-based IMRIS, which specializes in high-end interventional MR suites, swapped 1.6 common shares in exchange for NeuroArm Surgical Limited and all its intellectual property. The deal closed Friday, according to an IMRIS spokesman.

"This acquisition will deepen IMRIS's offering of image guided therapy solutions, by bringing surgical robotics together with MR imaging," IMRIS CEO David Graves said in a statement. "This technology offers the potential to increase neurosurgical precision and contribute to less invasive procedures."

The NeuroArm robot is operated from a theater featuring a bank of screens showing detailed 3-D images of the operation. Surgeons remotely control its two tremor-resistant arms that also relay accurate "touch" feedback to devices in the theater to let the doctors feel the texture of the patient's anatomy.

A prototype robot, invented by Dr. Garnette Sutherland, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of Calgary, is housed in Calgary's Foothills Hospital, where it is integrated with an IMRISneuro suite. Dr. Sutherland is also the co-creator of that suite, which also debuted at Foothills.

IMRIS and Richmond, British Columbia-based MacDonald Detwiler, which provided some of the initial technology behind the project, hope to develop a marketable second-generation version of the robot.

"We're looking to undertake development that will ultimately work as a commercially viable product," Brad Woods, a spokesman for IMRIS, tells DOTmed News. "Together with McDonald Detwiler [we'll] come up with a system that's attractive for neurosurgeons to utilize."

NeuroArm has already been "field-tested" -- it performed its first live human surgery in spring 2008.

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