In this section
Soft and flexible robotic systems for affordable healthcare.
Our research investigates fundamental aspects of control of soft and flexible robots for surgery. These include harnessing the intrinsic compliance of soft robots, rejecting disturbances that characterise the surgical environment, and complying with stringent safety requirements. Our ambition is to provide affordable robotic solutions for a range of surgical applications, including endoscopy, percutaneous intervention, and multi-handed surgery.
Robotics for healthcare is one of the fastest growing segments in the global robotics market. However, conventional surgical robots are unaffordable in low-resource settings. Harnessing the potential of soft and flexible robots can contribute to making surgery safter, more accurate, and more accessible in low-middle income countries. These are pressing needs due to the aging population, and to the growing workforce crisis in the healthcare market.
Our work aims to improve accuracy, reduce the risk of injury, and reduce discomfort in percutaneous interventions such as biopsy, in diagnostic and interventional endoscopy, and in multi-handed surgery.
Dr Enrico Franco
Lecturer
@article{Franco:2016:10.1118/1.4961986,
author = {Franco, E and Rea, M and Gedroyc, W and Ristic, M},
doi = {10.1118/1.4961986},
journal = {Medical Physics},
title = {Robot-Assistant for MRI-Guided Liver Ablation: a pilot study},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1118/1.4961986},
volume = {43},
year = {2016}
}
TY - JOUR
AB - Purpose:Percutaneous ablation under MRI-guidance allows treating otherwise inoperable liver tumors locally using a catheter probe. However, manually placing the probe is an error-prone and time consuming task that requires a considerable amount of training. The aim of this paper was to present a pneumatically actuated robotic instrument that can assist clinicians in MRI-guided percutaneous intervention of the liver and to assess its functionality in a clinical setting. The robot positions a needle-guide inside the MRI scanner bore and assists manual needle insertions outside the bore.Methods:The robot supports double oblique insertions that are particularly challenging for less experienced clinicians. Additionally, the system employs only standard imaging sequences and can therefore be used on different MRI scanners without requiring prior integration. The repeatability and the accuracy of the robot were evaluated with an optical tracking system. The functionality of the robot was assessed in an initial pilot study on two patients that underwent MRI-guided laser ablation of the liver.Results:The robot positioned the needle-guide in a repeatable manner with a mean error of 0.35 mm and a standard deviation of 0.32 mm. The mean position error corresponding to the needle tip, measured for an equivalent needle length of 195 mm over 25 fixed points, was 2.5 mm with a standard deviation of 1.2 mm. The pilot study confirmed that the robot does not interfere with the equipment used for MRI-guided laser ablation and does not visibly affect the MR images. The robot setup integrated seamlessly within the established clinical workflow. The robot-assisted procedure was successfully completed on two patients, one of which required a complex double oblique insertion. For both patients, the insertion depth and the tumor size were within the range reported for previous MRI-guided percutaneous interventions. A third patient initially enrolled in the pilot study and was considerably he
AU - Franco,E
AU - Rea,M
AU - Gedroyc,W
AU - Ristic,M
DO - 10.1118/1.4961986
PY - 2016///
SN - 0094-2405
TI - Robot-Assistant for MRI-Guided Liver Ablation: a pilot study
T2 - Medical Physics
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1118/1.4961986
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/39210
VL - 43
ER -
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