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About

E. Erdem Tuna is a leading researcher in robotic-assisted surgery, with a focus on enabling precise, autonomous motion compensation and control for beating heart procedures and MRI-guided interventions. His foundational work on heart motion prediction, using adaptive estimation algorithms for robotic-assisted beating heart surgery (57 citations), directly addresses the challenge of operating on a moving target, aiming to cancel heart motion as if the heart were stationary. Tuna has advanced this concept by developing active tracking methods robust to arrhythmia and by pioneering supervisory control systems for the DaVinci surgical robot, enhancing operator visualization and kinematic awareness. Beyond cardiac surgery, his research extends to MRI-guided steerable catheter systems, where he has analyzed dynamic response, contact stability, and safety during ablation procedures—critical for effective treatment of atrial fibrillation. Tuna’s contributions also include novel registration techniques using active fiducial markers for precise catheter-to-scanner alignment. With a career spanning adaptive control, medical robotics, and image-guided intervention, his work consistently pushes the boundaries of autonomous surgical assistance, impacting both the safety and efficacy of minimally invasive procedures.