Development of an Advanced Micro-neurosurgical Robotic System for the Deep Surgical Field

Abstract

In neurosurgery, surgeons have to perform minute and precise manipulations with poor visibility due to blood or cerebrospinal fluid. It is particularly difficult to operate in the deep surgical field. The authors have developed a microsurgical robotic system for the neurosurgery which overcomes these difficulties with precision of mechanical system. However, it was difficult for surgeons to operate the system skillfully without long training. Therefore, to ease the operation, the authors have developed a method to realize an intuitive motion with correspondence between the master and the slave manipulators, and also have developed a method to offer the information of spatial limits of the slave manipulator to operators. The experimental results showed the effectiveness of the developed system