Robot-Assisted Surgical
Machining
Surgeries
performed in the skull demand accuracy. In procedures that require
drilling or milling, the surgical instrument is often within 1mm of
brain or nerve tissue, so small errors can result in severe
complications for the patient. Despite the considerable skill and care
surgeons apply, accuracy and safety are fundamentally related to human
hand-eye coordination. Image-guided robots offer the potential to do
many of these tasks with speed, safely, and accurately that are beyond
the limits of human capability. The MED lab is working with
an interdisciplinary and multinational team of physicians and
engineers, led by the CAOS lab of Rob Labadie and Mike Fitzpatrick, to
develop robotic systems that can work within the challenging
constraints of the real-world operating room.
(Left) Our real-time system consists of a 6DOF Industrial Robot (programmed through Matlab/Simulink) and an NDI Polaris optical tracker. The robot uses the optical data to track a mock "patient" while drilling a desired trajectory and compensating for patient motion. (Right) Some sample milling experiments demonstrating the robot's capability to mill complex shapes in the presence of patient motion (see video below).
Work currently in progress involves applying this system to specific surgical interventions in the skull. Publications will be posted below as they become available - likely in late 2009.