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Updated: Jun 3, 2025
Author Spotlight: Revolutionizing Remote Surgery with Augmented Reality and Robotics for Enhanced Precision and Accessibility
Published on: August 9, 2024
Evaluation of (Shared) Autonomy in Robot-Assisted Vitreoretinal Surgery Using a Surgical Model
Murilo M Marinho1,2, Yuki Koyama1, Yuta Taniguchi1
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Japan.
Background:
Robot-assisted vitreoretinal surgery makes it easier for the surgeons to perform precise and dexterous manipulations required in vitreoretinal procedures.
Methods:
We systematically evaluated manual surgery, conventional two-hand teleoperation, a novel one-hand teleoperation, and automation in a needle positioning task using a realistic surgical eye model, measuring the expert surgeon's performances and the novice's learning curves.
Results:
The proposed one-hand teleoperation improved the positioning accuracy of expert surgeons , enabled novices to achieve a consistent accuracy more quickly , decreased the novice's workload more quickly , and made it easier for novices to learn to conduct the task quickly . Moreover, our autonomous positioning achieved an equivalent accuracy to the surgeons.
Conclusions:
The benefits and potential of task autonomy were shown. Further work is needed to evaluate the proposed methods in a more complex task.
