Software company Kitware, whose technology is used in visualization, medical imaging and computer vision, has been awarded $1.9 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health to validate a neurosurgery simulation tool.

The tool is intended for the treatment of arteriovenour malformations, or AVMs, which are abnormal tangles of arteries and veins in the brain. Kitware says that surgical resectioning of AVMs is one of the most complex surgeries involving blood vessels in the brain and reequires neurosurgeons to be highly trained. A realistic simulator will offer surgeons that training without jeopardizing patients.

Clifton, N.Y.-based Kitware, which also has an office in Carrboro, is collaborating on the project with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of North Carolina, Arizona state University and Professor Nikos Chrsochoides.

For the project, the collaborators aim to build a clinically-realistic and well-validated neurosurgical simulator that can effectively model vascular structures and non-linear deformations that occur during the surgical treatment of AVMs.

“We believe the proposed neurosurgical simulator will be a powerful teaching tool for training residents and allow them to practice their surgical skills in a risk-free environment before application to patients; this will translate to fewer operating room errors, reduced patient morbidity, and improved patient outcomes,” Dr. Andinet Enquobahrie, the overall contact Principal Investigator, said in a statement. “We will work with the Department of Neurosurgery at UNC to validate the effectiveness of the simulator as a training tool.”