Toward image-guided robotic surgery: determining intrinsic accuracy of the da Vinci robot

Abstract

The use of robotics in medicine has been growing in recent years. The introduction of specialized robots for surgery such as the daVinci (Intuitive Surgical, Sunnyvale, CA, USA) has largely motivated this growth. The currently available robotic-assisted surgery systems rely only on direct vision through the use of a laparoscopic camera for surgical guidance. While these cameras provide a stereoscopic view of the surface, they are incapable of showing beneath the surgical surface. In other surgical developments, image guidance has become an integral part of navigation and planning, allowing understanding of the locations beneath the surgical plane. As an early step in the development of a robotic image-guided surgical (RIGS) system, the physical limitations of a surgical robot must be assessed. In this paper the accuracy and the precision of the daVinci surgical system are quantified. It is shown that the daVinci system can successfully localize a point with an approximate fiducial localization error (FLE) of 1 mm. This FLE value demonstrates that the daVinci is within the accuracy limits of the other commonly used surgical localizers.

Towards image guided robotic surgery: multi-arm tracking through hybrid localization

“…Due to the location of the optical localizer rigid body, the measurements are still subject to the intrinsic error of the robot section of the daVinci arms, which was previously shown to be submillimetric. [11,10] In addition this inaccuracy is subject to amplification through the length of the arm.…”

“…As was previously established, the kinematics of the robot section of the manipulators is sufficiently accurate for use in IGS [11]. To assess the viability of intrinsic localization for the measurement of position in multiple arms, the intrinsic accuracy of the setup joints was assessed.…”

“…Previously tracking of a single arm within its own coordinate system was demonstrated and assessed [10,11]; however, for practical application tracking of all surgical arms within the same coordinate space is required.…”

“…While these tolerances are dictated by specific anatomy, in partial nephrectomy has been shown to be 7 mm based on the typical resection margin for this procedure [12]. The robot portion of the system consists of a series of active joints which have been previously demonstrated to have acceptable accuracy for use in image guidance [10,11].…”

Update: Toward image-guided robotic surgery: determining the intrinsic accuracy of the daVinci-S robot

“…Design of a robotic image guided surgery (RIGS) system, using the daVinci "classic" system was previously proposed [1]. Assessment of the system accuracy and precision gave an assessment as to the applicability of the "daVinci classic" system in a RIGS system.…”