Research on Application of Robotic Navigation System to Surgical Training

In order to achieve the greater safety during surgeries, The Image-Guided Surgery becomes more and more popular, also the needs of avoiding complications and shortening the recovery time after the surgery gradually expands. Therefore, an accurate, clever, and useful Image-Guided System in the new generation becomes indispensable. Seeing between the three types of Image-Guided System among Robotic, Optical, and Electro-Magnetical ones, the Robotic Image-Guided System has the advantages of: simpler structure, conveniently equipped, movable, clever applications, and there’s no need for complicated time-cost setup, it also avoids the light-shielding problem in the Optical ones. By multiple points-of-view, the Robotic Image-Guided System has an obvious superiority compared with the others. The research’s main idea is to create a Robotic Surgical Navigation System, so far we have focused on clinical planning for the VP Shunt surgery which cures the patients suffering from Hydrocephalus. We use a robot arm and a laser pointer, combined with the CT images’ information, pointing at the most suitable point to insert, helping the doctors to finish the surgery rapidly and accurately. In addition, we want to add the system with a self-made head-like phantom, providing the new surgeons a convenient and accurate Insertion-Practice System. We combine an Industrial Robot Arm with a Laser Pointer to construct a localizer, taking the advantages of some softwares: 3D Slicer for 3D Visualization, Matlab Graphical User Interface for the numerical inputs / outputs and calculations, registrations and communications, planning a complete clinical surgery process for the doctor. Through many experiments and cross-validations to make sure the accuracy, we expect to put the system to real clinical uses as soon as possible, playing goods for the patients suffering from brain diseases.