Automatic space calibration of a medical robot system

Abstract

In order to build an uniform coordinate system for a medical robot and its vision system in surgery, an automatic space calibration method is proposed based on the rotational and translational movements of the robot. With this method, both the robot and the NDI vision system can be calibrated to the patient's bones contour, which matches the virtual model built from the CT images. Thus surgical operation can be carried out by the robot following the preoperative design based on the virtual model. The calibration accuracy directly determines the precision of surgical operation. Experiments were carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of this calibration method, and the result showed that the position and posture error can meet the operation requirements. Also the calibration can be executed automatically to decrease the human effect and increase the reliability and stability.