Integration of New Features for Telerobotic Surgery into The Mirosurge System

Abstract

Abstract. Minimally invasive robotic surgery has gained wide acceptance recently. Computer-aided features to assist the surgeon during these interventions may help to develop safer, faster, and more accurate procedures. Especially physiological motion compensation of the beating heart and online soft tissue modelling are promising features that were developed recently. This paper presents the integration of these new features into the minimally invasive robotic surgery platform MiroSurge. A central aim of this research platform is to enable evaluation and comparison of new functionalities for minimally invasive robotic surgery. The system structure of MiroSurge is presented as well as the interfaces for the new functionalities. Some details about the modules for motion tracking and for soft tissue simulation are given. Results are shown with an experimental setup that includes a heart motion simulator and dedicated silicone organ models. Both features are integrated seamlessly and work reliably in the chosen setup. The MiroSurge platform thus shows the potential to provide valuable results in evaluating new functionalities for minimally invasive robotic surgery.

Review of Advanced Medical Telerobots

“…Regarding organ motion compensation, it can be mentioned that through advanced computer vision and image processing modules (most of which have a Kalman filter core algorithm [11,192,193,[195][196][197][198]) it is now possible to measure motions of moving organs such as heart and lung during the operation and compensate automatically for the physiological motions while the surgeon can be responsible only for providing relative positional commands. The image modalities used for these applications are usually acquired by endoscopic cameras or ultrasound probes connected to the robotic tools [10][11][12][13]. A major challenge for this motor augmentation task is the large latency for processing the images when compared with fast organ motions [11,[199][200][201].…”

“…For addressing this issue advance and lightweight signal processing modules such as Kalman filter [11] and advanced control modules such as model predictive control [202] have been suggested in the literature and sometimes are fused with other modalities such as electrocardiograms (ECG) to track, predict and compensate for the phase lag [11,[199][200][201][202][203][204][205]. This task is a form of shared autonomy (see Section 3.2) using which robots can utilize computer vision to compensate for the repetitive motions [12,199,203,[206][207][208]. This will significantly increase the accuracy of the operation since it significantly reduces the mental, cognitive, and physical load on the surgeons during operation [10,11,200,[209][210][211][212].…”

“…In this regard, teleoperated surgery has been widely investigated and commercialized. Yet, telemedicine applications also include various new remote services (whose interest grows during pandemics), such as a simple consultation or an expertise with a specific healthcare professional, telemonitoring/diagonosis [9], or an assistance for a particular procedure or examination [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19], over telecommunication networks.…”

System Design of a Novel Minimally Invasive Surgical Robot That Combines the Advantages of MIS Techniques and Robotic Technology

“…In recent years, MIS robots and related technologies have attracted increasing attention from researchers globally. Many prototypes have been successfully developed, including the da Vinci robot [5], [6], the MiroSurge robot [7], [8], the Avatera robot [9], the Revo-I robotic system [10]- [12], the Versius robotic system [13], and the Senhance robot [14], [15]. These prototypes are master-slave robots, as the surgeon controls the remote slave manipulators by operating the master manipulators.…”