System integration of NeuroBot: a skull-base surgical robotic system

Abstract

Skull-base surgery is a tedious operation that takes up to 8 hours just to complete the bone removal task. This is due to the fact that the skull base is one of the most complex regions where vital blood vessels and major cranial nerves pass through. In view of this problem, NeuroBot, a skull-base surgical robotic system, has been developed to assist the surgeon in performing the bone removal task, reducing it to 2 hours. This paper discusses the integration work of the NeuroBot system, starting with the overview of the NeuroBot system, its objective, features, and surgical robotics aspects. Subsequently, the system analysis comprising of the analysis to the surgical robotic procedure workflow and the details of every tasks are presented. An architectural design for the integration, derived based on the analysis stage, is then discussed, followed by some description on the existing developed modules and applications. This paper concludes with the explanation on the current state of the development work.