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VB Spine has completed its acquisition of exclusive rights to Augmedics' CT-to-fluoroscopy technology for spine applications and plans to integrate it into its xvision Spine System platform. The deal builds on VB Spine's April acquisition of exclusive rights to the xvision platform itself, also from Augmedics.
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CT-Fluoro combines a patient's preoperative CT scan with standard 2D fluoroscopic images to enable augmented reality guidance during spine surgery, without requiring the intraoperative CT or 3D imaging systems that many navigation platforms depend on. For xvision, it adds a new registration method that widens the imaging options available to surgeons mid-procedure.
Frank Phillips of Midwest Orthopedics at Rush University Medical Center, who performed the first AR-navigated minimally invasive spine surgery, said the technology has been "game-changing" in his ambulatory surgery center practice, where he can move to AR-guided surgery after two standard fluoroscopic images and a brief registration step.
The acquisition extends a pattern for VB Spine, which was spun out of Stryker and sold to the Viscogliosi brothers in 2025 with exclusive access to Stryker's Mako Spine and Copilot robotic technologies. The company also picked up the SpineHawk visualization platform from Robotron Surgical Technologies in January. Each deal adds a distinct navigation or visualization capability rather than building one in-house, a strategy aimed at giving surgeons options across settings, including regional hospitals and surgery centers where full 3D intraoperative imaging systems are often too costly to justify.
