Title
Toward the Design of Personalized Continuum Surgical Robots
Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Date
10-15-2018
Journal
Annals of Biomedical Engineering
Volume
46
Issue
10
DOI
10.1007/s10439-018-2062-2
Keywords
3D printing; Continuum robots; Minimally invasive procedures; Personalized surgical robots
Abstract
© 2018, Biomedical Engineering Society. Robot-assisted minimally invasive surgical systems enable procedures with reduced pain, recovery time, and scarring compared to traditional surgery. While these improvements benefit a large number of patients, safe access to diseased sites is not always possible for specialized patient groups, including pediatric patients, due to their anatomical differences. We propose a patient-specific design paradigm that leverages the surgeon’s expertise to design and fabricate robots based on preoperative medical images. The components of the patient-specific robot design process are a virtual reality design interface enabling the surgeon to design patient-specific tools, 3-D printing of these tools with a biodegradable polyester, and an actuation and control system for deployment. The designed robot is a concentric tube robot, a type of continuum robot constructed from precurved, elastic, nesting tubes. We demonstrate the overall patient-specific design workflow, from preoperative images to physical implementation, for an example clinical scenario: nonlinear renal access to a pediatric kidney. We also measure the system’s behavior as it is deployed through real and artificial tissue. System integration and successful benchtop experiments in ex vivo liver and in a phantom patient model demonstrate the feasibility of using a patient-specific design workflow to plan, fabricate, and deploy personalized, flexible continuum robots.
APA Citation
Morimoto, T., Greer, J., Hawkes, E., Hsieh, M., & Okamura, A. (2018). Toward the Design of Personalized Continuum Surgical Robots. Annals of Biomedical Engineering, 46 (10). http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10439-018-2062-2