Optics-guided Robotic System for Dental Implant Surgery

Abstract

At present, dental implant surgery mainly relies on the clinical experience of the doctor and the assistance of preoperative medical imaging. However, there are some problems in dental implant surgery, such as narrow space, sight obstruction, inaccurate positioning, and high requirements of doctors' proficiency. Therefore, a dental implant robot system (DIRS) guided by optical navigation is developed in this study, with an x-shaped tool and an irregular pentagonal tracer are designed for spatial registration and needle tip positioning strategy respectively. The coordinate system of each unit in DIRS is unified through system calibration, spatial registration, and needle tip positioning strategy. Then the surgical path is planned on the computed tomography (CT) images in the navigation software before operation. The automatic positioning method and the auxiliary positioning method can be used in the operation to achieve accurate positioning and assist doctors to complete the operation. The errors of spatial registration, needle tip positioning strategy, and the overall accuracy of the system were evaluated respectively, and the results showed that they all met the needs of clinical surgery. This study preliminarily verified the feasibility of the precise positioning method for dental surgery robots and provided certain ideas for subsequent related research.

Autonomous Robotic Surgery for Immediately Loaded Implant-Supported Maxillary Full-Arch Prosthesis: A Case Report

“…First, it is critical to automatically register the surgical and image space in this robotic surgery system before the surgery. Compared to conventional registration, automatic registration and calibration with the optical-system method have higher accuracy, meeting the clinical requirements [ 28 ]. Second, regarding freehand surgery, an inaccurate perception and hand tremors could lead to apparent lateral and angular deviation during the implant osteotomy, which is influenced by the surgeon’s experience, implant site, bone quality, etc.…”

Accuracy of implant site preparation in robotic navigated dental implant surgery

“…However, some problems may arise during the operation, such as limitations on mouth opening and obstruction of the surgical view, which can lead to poor implant accuracy. 3 In addition, the misplacement of dental implants has been proven to reduce long-term success or survival rates and damage nearby anatomical structures, such as the inferior alveolar nerve and Schneiderian membrane of the maxillary sinus. 4 Recent technological advancements have led to the development of tools to offer support to dentists in overcoming the drawbacks of implant surgery.…”

“…To date, successful dental implant surgery has largely been determined by dentists' experience. However, some problems may arise during the operation, such as limitations on mouth opening and obstruction of the surgical view, which can lead to poor implant accuracy 3 . In addition, the misplacement of dental implants has been proven to reduce long‐term success or survival rates and damage nearby anatomical structures, such as the inferior alveolar nerve and Schneiderian membrane of the maxillary sinus 4 .…”

Dental manpower and treated dental diseases in department of dentistry, Taipei Hospital (the predecessor of National Taiwan University Hospital) in 1923

“…Unlike the need to minimize incision size in eye surgery, dental procedures do not require a remote center of motion (RCM) mechanism. Consequently, in contrast to the utilization of parallel kinematics mechanisms [13], serial mechanisms have been widely adopted in dental robotics [10]- [12], [14], [17]. Only a small number of systems still rely on the use of the RCM mechanism [18], [19].…”

“…Although 6-DoF passive manipulators have been utilized for real-time pose measuring [10], [21], their significant physical footprint renders them unsuitable for narrow clinic spaces. On the other hand, visual-based tracking is widely applied for robot-patient alignment [13], [17], [20], [22], but it is less precise and susceptible to occlusion issues. While the direct attachment of a miniature robot onto the teeth [23] remains a technical challenge, improvements are needed in patient motion tracking for robot-assisted dental procedures.…”