Design and Kinematics of a Comanipulated Robot Dedicated to Prostate Brachytherapy

Abstract

SUMMARY In brachytherapy, the manual implantation of seeds is not accurate leading to side effects and limiting the use of new procedures. Robotics solutions have to be fully suitable for medical applications especially considering the operating room. This paper investigates a delta robot solution for improving the accuracy of the prostate brachytherapy procedure by proposing a compact and lightweight robot. In addition, the design was thought as a comanipulated robot for a better acceptability and human–machine interaction. The robot kinematics and singularities were determined and the theoretical capability in term of resolution and force feedback was evaluated. A prototype was built in order to experimentally measure the capability of this first prototype.