A HKU Mechanical Engineering group led by Dr. Kwok Ka-wai recently designed a initial neurosurgical robotic complement able of behaving shared stereotactic neurosurgery inside a captivating inflection imaging (“MRI”) scanner. The group also conducted pre-clinical validation of a complement with CUHK neurosurgeons, Dr Danny Chan Tat-ming and Professor Poon Wai-sang. This innovative technological breakthrough can promote a diagnosis of Parkinson’s illness and other neuropsychiatric disorders.
DBS therapy, like a heart pacemaker, can broach electrical signals by ingrained electrodes to a low mind targets. It helps to revive normal haughtiness dungeon activity. This medicine is tremendously perfectionist on accuracy, by targeting usually a little iota structures and not deleterious a surrounding vicious tissue. Without a intra-operative updates of a surgical “roadmap,” a mind might change after a skull is non-stop and fundamentally lowers a targeting accuracy. Conventional DBS is achieved while a studious is watchful underneath internal anesthesia. Surgeons have to rest on written or earthy interactions with a patients to safeguard a electrode chain is going well. These surgical complications encouraged a HKU-led group to rise a compress drudge guided by MRI. This facilitates reduction invasive stereotactic procedures on a studious underneath ubiquitous anesthesia, as surgeons could accurately control and weigh a stereotactic strategy bilaterally to a left and right mind targets in genuine time.
The group successfully resolved many unmet technical challenges. For example, MRI scanners have really clever captivating fields and many lead components are banned in MRI environments, including a electromagnetic (EM) motors ordinarily used in robots. The group has grown a totally captivating inflection (“MR”) concordant tele-operated complement driven by liquid. It does not beget any EM division or impact imaging peculiarity even during a drudge operation. A pimp is designed to perform deft operation towards a left-and-right mind targets, and a area compulsory for an invasive port is really small. The compress drudge pattern can be accommodated inside a customary MRI control curl for imaging and intervention. Advanced 3-D tracking markers are also developed, that capacitate quick localization of drudge instruments in MRI in genuine time.
The success of this plan would paint a vital step towards safer, some-more accurate and effective mind surgery. It is believed that all these components can be practical to other interventions requiring MRI guidance, e.g. cardiac catheterization, prostate or breast biopsy. The investigate group skeleton to control serve clinical studies to establish a efficiency of a system.
The group comprising both engineers and surgeons was recently conferred a Best Conference Paper Award in a largest general forum for robotics scientists, a IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2018 (ICRA’18), that was hold in Brisbane, Australia, from May 21 to 25, 2018. The ICRA is a world’s tip discussion where robotics scientists can deliver and benefaction their latest work. More than 3,000 participants from academia and attention join a discussion annually. This year, ICRA’18 reviewed 2,539 papers, a new record in a history, from 61 countries. A sum of 1,030 papers were comparison for presentation.
This year, a group was conferred a final best out of 35 finalists in all a 9 robotics categories, including drudge vision, cognitive robotics, drudge strategy and unmanned aerial vehicles. Other shortlisted universities and companies embody MIT, Harvard, Stanford and DeepMind. The group plan was also shortlisted as a finalist for a Medical Robotics paper endowment during a same Conference.
