Proceedings of the ... IEEE/RAS-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics. IEEE/RAS-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics最新文献

Concentric tube robots have potential for use in a wide variety of surgical procedures due to their small size, dexterity, and ability to move in highly curved paths. Unlike most existing clinical robots, the design of these robots can be developed and manufactured on a patient- and procedure-specific basis. The design of concentric tube robots typically requires significant computation and optimization, and it remains unclear how the surgeon should be involved. We propose to use a virtual reality-based design environment for surgeons to easily and intuitively visualize and design a set of concentric tube robots for a specific patient and procedure. In this paper, we describe a novel patient-specific design process in the context of the virtual reality interface. We also show a resulting concentric tube robot design, created by a pediatric urologist to access a kidney stone in a pediatric patient.

Many upper limb amputees are faced with the difficult challenge of using a prosthesis that lacks tactile sensing. State of the art research caliber prosthetic hands are often equipped with sophisticated sensors that provide valuable information regarding the prosthesis and its surrounding environment. Unfortunately, most commercial prosthetic hands do not contain any tactile sensing capabilities. In this paper, a textile based tactile sensor system was designed, built, and evaluated for use with upper limb prosthetic devices. Despite its simplicity, we demonstrate the ability of the sensors to determine object contact and perturbations due to slip during a grasping task with a prosthetic hand. This suggests the use of low-cost, customizable, textile sensors as part of a closed-loop tactile feedback system for monitoring grasping forces specifically in an upper limb prosthetic device.

A novel compact and lightweight patient-mounted MRI-compatible robot has been designed for MRI image-guided interventions. This robot is intended to enable MRI-guided needle placement as done in shoulder arthrography. The robot could make needle placement more accurate and simplify the current workflow by converting the traditional two-stage arthrography procedure (fluoroscopy-guided needle insertion followed by a diagnostic MRI scan) to a one-stage procedure (streamlined workflow all in MRI suite). The robot has 4 degrees of freedom (DOF), two for orientation of the needle and two for needle positioning. The mechanical design was based on several criteria including rigidity, MRI compatibility, compact design, sterilizability, and adjustability. The proposed workflow is discussed and initial MRI compatibility experiments are presented. The results show that artifacts in the region of interest are minimal and that MRI images of the shoulder were not adversely affected by placing the robot on a human volunteer.

Retinal microsurgery requires the manipulation of extremely delicate tissues by various micron scale maneuvers and the application of very small forces. Among vitreoretinal procedures, membrane peeling is a standard procedure requiring the delamination of a very thin fibrous membrane on the retina surface. This study presents the development and evaluation of an integrated assistive system for membrane peeling. This system combines a force-sensing motorized micro-forceps with an active tremor-canceling handheld micromanipulator, Micron. The proposed system (1) attenuates hand-tremor when accurate positioning is needed, (2) provides auditory force feedback to keep the exerted forces at a safe level, and (3) pulsates the tool tip at high frequency to provide ease in delaminating membranes. Experiments on bandages and raw chicken eggs have revealed that controlled micro-vibrations provide significant ease in delaminating membranes. Applying similar amount of forces, much faster delamination was observed when the frequency of these vibrations were increased (up to 50 Hz).

Lack of force sensing is one of the most formidable technical challenges in retinal microsurgery. Incorporating high sensitivity force sensing into the ophthalmic tools has the potential to provide the surgeon useful force feedback and to enable safe robotic assistance. This paper presents a new design of a three degrees of freedom force sensing instrument based on fiber Bragg grating sensors. A new flexure is developed to achieve high axial force sensing sensitivity and low crosstalk noise. The force sensing segment of the tool, located directly proximal to the tool tip, is ø0.9×8 mm. An extensive calibration shows that the force sensor can measure the transverse and axial force up to 21 mN with 0.5 mN and 3.3 mN accuracy, respectively. The new flexure design demonstrates the potential to improve axial force sensing. Analysis of the experiment results suggests improvements for the future iteration.

HeartLander is a miniature mobile robot which adheres to and crawls over the surface of the beating heart to provide therapies in a minimally invasive manner. Although HeartLander inherently provides a stable operating platform, the motion of the surface of the heart remains an important factor in the operation of the robot. The quasi-periodic motion of the heart due to physiological cycles, respiration and the heartbeat, affects the ability of the robot to move, as well as localize accurately. In order to improve locomotion efficiency, as well as register different locations on the heart in physiological phase, two methods of identifying physiological phases are presented: sliding-window-based and model-based. In the sliding-window-based approach a vector of previous measurements is compared to previously learned motion templates to determine the current physiological phases, while the model-based approach learns a Fourier series model of the motion, and uses this model to estimate the current physiological phases using an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). The two methods, while differing in approach, produce similarly accurate results on data recorded from animal experiments in vivo.

Injecting clot-busting drugs such as t-PA into tiny vessels thinner than a human hair in the eye is a challenging procedure, especially since the vessels lie directly on top of the delicate and easily damaged retina. Various robotic aids have been proposed with the goal of increasing safety by removing tremor and increasing precision with motion scaling. We have developed a fully handheld micromanipulator, Micron, that has demonstrated reduced tremor when cannulating porcine retinal veins in an "open sky" scenario. In this paper, we present work towards handheld robotic cannulation with the goal of vision-based virtual fixtures guiding the tip of the cannula to the vessel. Using a realistic eyeball phantom, we address sclerotomy constraints, eye movement, and non-planar retina. Preliminary results indicate a handheld micromanipulator aided by visual control is a promising solution to retinal vessel occlusion.

Accurate needle placement plays a key role in success of prostate biopsy and brachytherapy. During percutaneous interventions, the prostate gland rotates and deforms which may cause significant target displacement. In these cases straight needle trajectory is not sufficient for precise targeting. Although needle spinning and fast insertion may be helpful, they do not entirely resolve the issue. We propose robot-assisted bevel-tip needle steering under MRI guidance as a potential solution to compensate for the target displacement. MRI is chosen for its superior soft tissue contrast in prostate imaging. Due to the confined workspace of the MRI scanner and the requirement for the clinician to be present inside the MRI room during the procedure, we designed a MRI-compatible 2-DOF haptic device to command the needle steering slave robot which operates inside the scanner. The needle steering slave robot was designed to be integrated with a previously developed pneumatically actuated transperineal robot for MRI-guided prostate needle placement. We describe design challenges and present the conceptual design of the master and slave robots and the associated controller.

In this paper we discuss two possible strategies of movement control that can be used by stroke survivors during rehabilitation robotics training. To perform a reaching task in a minimally assistive force field, subjects either can move following the trajectory provided by the assistive force or they can use an internal representation of a minimum jerk trajectory from their starting position to the target. We used the stiffness and damping values directly estimated from the experimental data to simulate the trajectories that result by taking into account both hypotheses. The comparison of the simulated results with the data collected on four hemiparetic subjects supports the hypothesis that the central nervous system (CNS) is still able to correctly plan the movement, although a normal execution is impaired.

Motor impairments seems to play an important role in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Early detection of motor abnormalities during first years of life, may give important information regarding whether a child may receive a later diagnosis of Autism: for this reason an objective assessment of motor performance is crucial. While there are several technological solutions suitable to this end, they often require highly structured environments. In this work we propose the use of a magneto-inertial platform to study early motor performance between 12-36 months of age suitable to be used in non-structured environment.