Optimizing milling parameters based on full factorial experiment and backpropagation artificial neural network of...

Milling operations of laminae in spinal surgery generate high temperatures, which can lead to thermal injury and osteonecrosis and affect the biomechanical effects of implants, ultimately leading to surgical failure.

In this paper, a backpropagation artificial neural network (Bp-ANN) temperature prediction model was developed based on full factorial experimental data of laminae milling to optimize the milling motion parameters and to improve the safety of robot-assisted spine surgery.

A full factorial experiment design were used to analyze the parameters affecting the milling temperature of laminae. The experimental matrixes were established by collecting the corresponding cutter temperature Tc and bone surface temperature Tb for the milling depth, feed speed and different bone densities. The Bp-ANN lamina milling temperature prediction model was constructed from experiment data.

Increasing milling depth increases bone surface and cutter temperature. Increasing feed speed had little effect on cutter temperature, but decreased bone surface temperature. Increasing bone density of laminae increased cutter temperature. The Bp-ANN temperature prediction model had best training results in the 10th epoch, and there is no overfitting (training set R= 0.99661, validation set R= 0.85003, testing set R= 0.90421, all temperature data set R= 0.93807). The goodness of fit R of Bp-ANN was close to 1, indicating that the predicted temperature was in good agreement with the experiment measurements.

This study can help spinal surgery-assisted robot to select appropriate motion parameters at different density bones to improve lamina milling safety.