On the structure of the macro-micro neurosurgical robots in stereotactic surgery

Minimum invasive surgery (MIS) has been a key issue in medical surgery since it could not only minimize the operation scars (or other aftermath) but also significantly reduce the recovery time of the patients after the surgery. In fact, robotic technology has shown its effectiveness in many medical surgery areas such as neurologic surgery, orthopedic surgery, percutaneous surgery, radiosurgery, laparoscopic surgery, etc. [1-12]. More effort have been devoted to further extend its potential to other medical areas. In particular, very high precision and safety are extremely important in neurosurgery since the fine and accurate operations either inside the brain or close to neural cords should be conducted. Slight mistakes or errors during the surgery could result in serious and unrecoverable damage to the patients. Thus, as efforts to reduce or to replace the role and the burden of the surgeons in neurosurgical operations such as spinal fusions, stereotactic operations, etc., many different types of advanced neurosurgical robot systems have been introduced [1-12]. Among those neurosurgical operations, the robotic system conducting stereotactic neurosurgical interventions such as Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) will be mainly discussed in this paper. In DBS operation, a multi-contact electrode is inserted into the designated location of the brain where it provides high frequency electrical current pulses to a subthaelamic necleus. The operation is known to be very effective in the treatment for epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and other diseases but requires extremely high precision and demands carefulness. So far, many different forms of commercialized traditional stereotactic devices have been introduced. The joint structure of the most conventional stereotactic devices are either the PPPRR type or the PPRPR type where P and R denotes the prismatic joint and the revolute joint, respectively. The needle type inserting device or the micro-drive unit attached to Corresponding Author: Wheekuk Kim Affiliation: Department of Control and Instrumentation Engineering, Korea University at Sejong 2511 Sejong-ro, Sejong, Korea Tel: +82-44-860-1443 Email: wheekuk@korea.ac.kr