Robot-assisted anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction based on three-dimensional images

Background Tunnel placement is a key step in anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of bone tunnel drilling in arthroscopic ACL reconstruction assisted by a three-dimensional (3D) image-based robot system. Methods Robot-assisted ACL reconstruction was performed on twelve freshly frozen knee specimens. During the operation, three-dimensional images were used for ACL bone tunnel planning, and the robotic arm was used for navigation and drilling. Twelve patients who underwent traditional arthroscopic ACL reconstruction were included. 3D computed tomography was used to measure the actual position of the ACL bone tunnel and to evaluate the accuracy of the robotic and traditional ACL bone tunnel. Results On the femoral side, the positions of robotic and traditional surgery tunnels were 29.3 ± 1.4% and 32.1 ± 3.9% in the deep-to-shallow direction of the lateral femoral condyle (p = 0.032), and 34.6 ± 1.2% and 21.2 ± 9.4% in the high-to-low direction (p < 0.001), respectively. On the tibial side, the positions of the robotic and traditional surgical tunnels were located at 48.4 ± 0.9% and 45.8 ± 2.8% of the medial-to-lateral diameter of the tibial plateau (p = 0.008), 38.1 ± 0.8% and 34.6 ± 6.0% of the anterior-to-posterior diameter (p = 0.071), respectively. Conclusions In this study, ACL reconstruction was completed with the assistance of a robot arm and 3D images, and the robot was able to drill the bone tunnel more accurately than the traditional arthroscopic ACL reconstruction.