Automation of tissue piercing using circular needles and vision guidance for computer aided laparoscopic surgery

Abstract

Abstract-Despite the fact that minimally invasive robotic surgery provides many advantages for patients, such as reduced tissue trauma and shorter hospitalization, complex tasks (e.g. tissue piercing or knot-tying) are still time-consuming, errorprone and lead to quicker fatigue of the surgeon. Automating these recurrent tasks could greatly reduce total surgery time for patients and disburden the surgeon while he can focus on higher level challenges. This work tackles the problem of autonomous tissue piercing in robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery with a circular needle and general purpose surgical instruments. To command the instruments to an incision point, the surgeon utilizes a laser pointer to indicate the stitching area. A precise positioning of the needle is obtained by means of a switching visual servoing approach and the subsequent stitch is performed in a circular motion.

Dynamic Gesture Recognition Using a Smart Glove in Hand-Assisted Laparoscopic Surgery

“…The actions to test the collaborative robot take into account the various robotic actions covered by the literature [20], among which are the guidance of the laparoscopic camera for the safe movement of the endoscope [21] or a needle insertion [22], the prediction of the end point [23,24], the knotting and unknotting on suture procedures [25], or grasping and lifting on tissue retraction [26]. Ultimately, we selected three actions to be performed by the collaborative robot: center the image from the endoscope, indicate a place to suture, and stretch the thread to suture.…”

Automating multi-throw multilateral surgical suturing with a mechanical needle guide and sequential convex optimization

“…Automated Suturing: Automation of suturing has been studied in the context of hierarchical models for multi-step task planning [11], multilateral manipulation of needle and suture [34], and interaction with deformable tissue [8,9].…”

“…Padoy et al showed execution of collaborative human-robot suturing, but the key sections requiring interactions such as needle insertion and hand-off were performed manually [26]. Similarly, Staub et al automated needle insertion into tissue for single-throw suturing [34].…”

Implementation and evaluation of a gesture-based input method in robotic surgery

“…Virtual constraints [2] and supervision of manipulation forces [3] minimize the risk of tissue damage. Augmentation of the patient with preoperative imaging modalities [4] and the associated information presentation, camera control and (partly) autonomous executed actions of error-prone and recurrent (sub-) tasks, such as knottying [5] or tissue piercing [6], have drawn the attention of researchers. This growing number of high level functionality that we might see in future (commercial) systems has to be executed, controlled and supervised by the human operator.…”