Path planning for robot assisted femur shaft fracture reduction : A preliminary investigation

Abstract

When doing femur fracture reduction surgery, both the patient and the surgeon are exposed to a great amount of radiation, which is harmful to their health. Computer assisted orthopaedic surgery (CAOS) is a less invasive approach for its ability to reduce the usage of image intensifier. The authors have developed a six degree of freedom (DOF) parallel-serial surgical robot named D'cros(Dual Cartesian robot for orthopaedic surgeon) for fracture reduction surgery. To perform automatic fracture reduction surgery, reduction path for D'cros is needed. This paper presents an initial investigation of an automatic reduction path planning algorithm based on the shortest linear path.