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Building An Open-source Robotic Stereotaxic Instrument
Published on: October 29, 2013
Quantifying workspace and forces of surgical dissection during robot-assisted neurosurgery
Yaser Maddahi1, Liu Shi Gan1, Kourosh Zareinia1
1Project neuroArm, Department of Clinical Neuroscience and the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary, 1C58-HRIC, 3280 Hospital Dr NW, Calgary, AB, T2N 4Z6, Canada.
Background:
A prerequisite for successful robot-assisted neurosurgery is to use a hand-controller matched with characteristics of real robotic microsurgery. This study reports quantified data pertaining to the required workspace and exerted forces of surgical tools during robot-assisted microsurgery.
Methods:
A surgeon conducted four operations in which the neuroArm surgical system, an image-guided computer-assisted manipulator specifically designed to perform robot-assisted neurosurgery, was employed to surgically remove brain tumors. The position, orientation, and exerted force of surgical tools were measured during operations.
Results:
Workspace of the neuroArm manipulators, for the cases studied, was 60×60×60 mm(3) while it offered orientation ranges of 103°, 62° and 112°. The surgical tools exerted a maximum force of 1.86 N with frequency band of less than 20 Hz.
Conclusions:
This data provides important information specific to neurosurgery that can be used to select among commercially available, or further design a customized, haptic hand-controller for robot-assisted neurosurgical systems. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
