Minirobot Enters Blood Vessels, Complete Surgery

 Healthcare robotics advance.

Mini Robot Enters Blood Vessels, Completes Surgery

By IEEE Spectrum, March 10, 2023

Miniature robots traveling through blood vessels could offer a more precise and easy way to access an internal treatment site than estimating the position of a catheter from outside the patient’s body using X-rays,

Researchers at South Korea's Hanyang University recently demonstrated that a miniature robot could travel autonomously to a superficial femoral artery in a pig, deliver contrast dye, and return safely to the extraction point.

This could pave the way for the use of robots to treat occlusive vascular disease in humans and eliminate the need for X-ray imaging to guide surgical equipment.

The researchers developed the I-RAMAN (robotically assisted magnetic navigation system for endovascular intervention) robot, which can navigate a patient's blood vessels autonomously using a three-dimensional map generated from two-dimensional X-ray images.

The robot is injected into a blood vessel via catheter, then an external magnetic field untethers the robot from the catheter and guides it to the treatment area and back.

From IEEE Spectrum

View Full Article    

Surgery Robot on ISS

Clearly needed as distances and times in space grow. 

A Surgery Robot Will Board the ISS in 2024

By Adrianna Nine on August 4, 2022   in ExtremeTech

After nearly 20 years of development, a small remote-controlled surgery robot is preparing to join the most exclusive medical arena currently known: the International Space Station (ISS).

In partnership with robotics company Virtual Incision, engineers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have devised a narrow robot that helps medical professionals conduct surgical procedures from afar. MIRA, short for “miniaturized in vivo robotic assistant,” can be controlled remotely and even perform surgery autonomously. And thanks to a $100,000 grant from NASA, it could be proving its chops in space in as little as two years.

At first glance, the two-pound robot almost looks like a small kitchen gadget. Its base rod has a few basic switches and eventually gives way to a claw-like apparatus, which performs the actual surgery. Between each arm of the claw exists a camera, which helps to guide the robot throughout the procedure. But no one will be manning the camera when MIRA’s aboard the ISS. Instead, MIRA will work autonomously to complete simulation exercises, such as cutting taut rubber bands or pushing metal rings along a wire, which the University of Nebraska-Lincoln says imitates surgical activity.  .... ' 

Robotic Surgeries Better?

Useful to see some measurement of quality

Are Robotic Surgeries Really Better?

By The New York Times, August 17, 2021

Surgical procedures performed with the aid of a robot is sometimes marketed as the "best" form of surgery. But a recent review of 50 randomized controlled trials, testing robot-assisted surgeries against conventional methods for abdominal or pelvic procedures, suggests that while there may be some benefits to robotic surgery, any advantages over other approaches are modest.

Robotic surgery is performed by surgeons, not robots. But instead of conventional hand-held tools used in laparoscopic surgery, which involves tiny incisions, and open surgery, in which the surgeon enters the body through a large incision, the doctor uses a machine. The surgeon controls the machine's tools remotely by using joysticks and foot controls while viewing the surgical site through a high-definition monitor that provides a three-dimensional image of the proedure.

Some surgeons believe that these robots allow more precision during the operation, shorter recovery time, and generally better clinical outcomes for patients. But the review found that in many ways, compared outcomes from the robotic and conventional procedures showed little difference.

Article

Ethical Questions about AI Surgery

Wondered at first where the ethical questions were coming from.  Access to advanced methods?  No, it seems privacy was once again involved.

Researchers examine the ethical implications of AI in surgical settings
Kyle Wiggers

A new whitepaper   https://arxiv.org/pdf/2007.14302.pdf   coauthored by researchers at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence examines the ethics of AI in surgery, making the case that surgery and AI carry similar expectations but diverge with respect to ethical understanding. Surgeons are faced with moral and ethical dilemmas as a matter of course, the paper points out, whereas ethical frameworks in AI have arguably only begun to take shape.

In surgery, AI applications are largely confined to machines performing tasks controlled entirely by surgeons. AI might also be used in a clinical decision support system, and in these circumstances, the burden of responsibility falls on the human designers of the machine or AI system, the coauthors argue.  .... " 

Bio-Ink for 3D Printing Inside the Body

Quite a remarkable possibility when linked to medical robotics.

Bio-Ink for 3D Printing Inside the Body
IEEE Spectrum
Charles Q. Choi
July 1, 2020

Researchers at The Ohio State University (OSU) have developed a bio-ink that can be three-dimensionally (3D) printed at human body temperature, and solidified using visible light. Bio-inks are composed of living cells suspended in a gel and are safe for use inside people, potentially paving the way for 3D printing inside the body. Using a 3D printing nozzle affixed to robotic machinery to dispense bio-ink in a controlled manner, the researchers were able to bio-print onto soft materials, with interlocking knobs left beneath the surface anchoring the printed structure to the body like surgical staples. OSU's David Hoelzle said the goal is not to bio-print an entire organ, but to "augment a standard surgery by delivering a biomaterial with a tethered growth factor to jumpstart healing, or a tethered drug to prevent infection. ... We envision a biomaterial bio-ink printing tool as another tool in the surgeon's toolset."  ... ' 

Robotic Blood Vessel Instrument Guidance

Seen this movie.  Pgressin this area continues to evolve

Instrument Guidance Through Deep, Convoluted Blood Vessel Networks
Polytechnique Montreal
December 3, 2019

Researchers at the Polytechnique Montreal Nanorobotics Laboratory in Canada have developed a robotic platform that can guide endovascular surgery through deeper, difficult-to-access blood vessel networks than previously possible. The Fringe Field Navigation (FFN) method taps the magnetic field that the superconducting magnet of a clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner produces. The platform utilizes a robotic table positioned within the fringe field by the scanner; this table moves on all axes to position and orient the patient, based on the direction in which a surgical instrument must be guided through the body. The table automatically shifts direction and orientation to position the subject for successive stages of the instrument's journey, with FFN mapping the directional forces of the scanner's magnetic field.  .... "

Robot Prototype for Microsurgery

Seems a considerable advance.   Full and more technical article at the link

Robot Prototype Shows Promise for Microsurgery on Eyes, Aneurysms
By Vanderbilt School of Engineering

Professor Nabil Simaan and Professor Karen Joos
Mechanical Engineering Professor Nabil Simaan and Karen Joos, MD, Joseph N. and Barbara H. Ellis Family Professor of Ophthalmology

Researchers at Vanderbilt University have developed a continuum robot that achieves multi-scale motion and may allow previously impossible complex microsurgeries. The robot can provide both large macro motion workspace as necessary for surgical intervention, as well as small micro motions workspace with motion resolutions of one micron or less.

The miniaturization and range of motion achieved by this technology would allow precise control during procedures on complex aneurysms, tiny veins and arteries, nerves, and the delicate structures of the eye, the inner ear, and the vocal cords.

Said Vanderbilt researcher Nabil Simaan, "This new class of robots will provide micro-precision while traversing macroscale sinuous pathways to the operation site."

From Vanderbilt School of Engineering  .... " 

VR in the Operating Room

Good case for VR.  Complex, real time, lots of sensor data,  collaboration and interaction is key.  We worked on operation room simulation to make them more efficient.

Virtual Reality Gets Real in the Operating Room
Fortune   By Andrew Zaleski

A growing number of hospitals and medical centers are embracing virtual technology (VR), with the goal of providing better and faster training for resident doctors and surgeons. Stanford University students learn anatomy by walking around a lifelike digital hologram of a lung, and transport themselves inside a heart to see the valves and pumping blood. VR technology helps students learn faster, which is especially important in countries like China and India, where a combined 6 million new physicians will be needed by next year. VR can be used either as a fully immersive experience, in which users see only a computer-generated environment, or as a part of mixed reality, in which three-dimensional images are projected onto the physical world. The University of Washington in Seattle’s Richard Satava said VR “gives us a way to judge whether the medical student has learned what they are supposed to learn.” ...  "