Image Guided in-vivo Tooling Platform for Minimal Acess Surgery

Active Personnel:

• Jienan Ding (Post Doc, starting 6/2008)
• Kai Xu, Ph.D. (graduated 9/2009)
• Roger Goldman, M.D.-Ph.D. student
• Shuaimin Liu (started 9/1/2009)
• Austin Reiter, Ph.D. candidate Computer Science (Columbia Robotics Lab)

This 3-year NIH-funded project is an ongoing collaboration between ARMA, the Department of Surgery, and and Computer Science at Columbia University.

Our project goals are to design insertable in-vivo robotic platform for single port surgery (less invasive surgery). This robotic platform is capable of bi-manual dexterous manipulation while providing stereo vision guidance. The system is also being designed for supporting several modalities of energy delivery, and sensory data collection. Figure 1 shows the current prototype of our system. The design allows this system to enter the abdominal cavity through a 15 mm trocar. When deployed, the system provides two highly dexterous arms for surgical intervention. A stereo camera module is used to automatically track instruments and for control feedback to compensate for deflection inaccuracies of the flexible continuum robot arms.

Figure 1. The IREP robot with two dexterous continuum robot arms and a controllable vision module

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Movie 1: Early tests of the IREP

Movie 2: Early tests of the IREP

Movie 3: In-Vivo Tool tracking (Credits: Austin Reiter, Jamie Landamn, Peter Allen. Columbia Robotics Lab)

Publications

1. Xu, K., Goldman, R., Ding, J., Allen, P., Fowler, D., Simaan, N., “System Design of an Insertable Robotic Effector Platform for Single Port Access (SPA) Surgery,” accepted for publication in 2009 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS’2009), 2009.
2. Ding, J., Xu, K., Goldman, R., Allen, P., Fowler, D., Simaan, N., "Design, Simulation and Evaluation of Kinematic Alternatives for Insertable Robotic Effectors Platforms in Single Port Access Surgery," accepted for publication in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA¡¯2010).

Collaborators

• Dr. Dennis Folwer
• Dr. Peter K.Allen (Columbia Robotics Lab)