Design and implementation of a patient-specific cognitive engine for robotic needle insertion

Abstract

In order to develop an effective and user-friendly control method for surgical robotic system, we propose a new framework of cognitive engine to supervise and regulate the surgical processes. The framework aims to make the surgical processes understandable by both human operators and robots. A prototype cognitive engine was implemented using ontology and SPARQL query language on JAVA and tested in ex-vivo phantom experiments with a robotic RF needle insertion system. The prototype cognitive engine has successfully guided the robot in execution of surgical procedures.