Energid Technologies (United States)

Telemanipulated robot-assisted surgical procedures of the retina require precise manipulation of instruments inserted through trocars in the sclera. However, there is not a unique mapping of the motions of the surgeon’s hand to the lower-dimensional motions of the instrument through the trocar, and it is not obvious what method would be best. In this letter, we study operator performance during a precision positioning task reminiscent of telemanipulated retinal surgery on a force-sensing phantom retina with three viable and previously considered options for the haptic-interface kinematics. The haptic-interface kinematics are implemented virtually, in software, on a PHANTOM Premium 6DOF haptic interface. Results from a study with 12 novice human subjects show that overall performance is best with the kinematics that represent a compact and inexpensive option, and that subjects’ subjective preference agrees with the objective performance results.

This paper outlines the design of a portable manipulator system for use in remote detection and care of hemorrhage using High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU). We have developed a kinematically redundant manipulator that uses high fidelity force control for safe interaction with human patients. The manipulator is outfitted with a dual imaging and sonication end-effector for hemorrhage detection and treatment. Unlike most available force controlled manipulators, the design presented in this paper has all the actuation embedded inside its body eliminating the need for a base which greatly improves portability. We review the main design features, advantages, and trade-offs of this approach and present experimental data of hemorrhage detection and controlled sonication of biological tissue samples.

Energid is developing a realistic surgery simulator that delivers high fidelity visual and haptic feedback based on the physics of deformable objects. Modeling the interaction of surgical tools with soft biological tissue in real time poses challenges because the precise physical models of organs are not readily available, and the simulation of the behavior of tissue has a high computational burden. In this paper we present a realistic surgery simulation technique which inlcudes novel algorithms for simulating surgical palpation and cutting. We implement a meshfree numerical technique for realistic surgery palpation simulation. Simulation of surgical cutting is one of the most challenging tasks in the development of a surgery simulator. Changes in topology during simulation render precomputed data unusable. Moreover, the process is nonlinear and the underlying physics is complex. We propose a hybrid approach to the simulation of surgical cutting procedures by combining a node snapping technique with a physically based meshfree computational scheme.