A "eye-in-body" integrated surgery robot system for stereotactic surgery.

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Surgical Technology
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Current stereotactic surgical robot systems require complex calibration, tracking, and registration processes, hindering ease of use.
• These cumbersome steps are necessary for establishing accurate intraoperative coordinate transformations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel stereotactic surgical robot system that overcomes the usability challenges of existing systems.
• To simplify the surgical workflow by reducing the need for intraoperative procedures.

Main Methods:

• A hand-eye integrated scheme was employed to eliminate the need for intraoperative calibration between the robot arm and motion tracking system.
• A specialized reference-tool-based method was developed for patient registration and tracking, avoiding intraoperative registration.
• A model-free visual servo method was utilized to decrease sensitivity to errors in the hand-eye relationship and robot kinematic model.
• A prototype was built and subjected to performance tests, including a pedicle screw drilling experiment.

Main Results:

• The proposed system demonstrated acceptable accuracy in target positioning, with errors of -0.68 ± 0.52 mm and 0.06 ± 0.41 mm in the plane.
• Orientation accuracy was achieved within 0.43 ± 0.25°.
• The pedicle screw drilling experiment confirmed the system's capability to perform accurate stereotactic surgery.

Conclusions:

• The novel stereotactic surgical robot system enables stereotactic surgery without intraoperative hand-eye calibration or manual registration.
• The system achieves acceptable positional and orientational accuracy.
• It demonstrates tolerance to errors in hand-eye coordinate transformation and robot kinematics models, enhancing robustness.