Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 1
. Upper images showing ceiling and floor stand-mounted robotic microscope used
for image-guided navigation, with the lower image of a neurosurgeon and his assistant in
the operating suite planning and resecting the tumor seen in Figure 2.
Kelly, began exploring how robots could be adapted to accomplish both com-
puter-assisted and computer-directed image-guided operations (5,14,15,18).
2.4.1. Surgical Navigation with an Operating Microscope
Among the early developments was a method of attaching a surgical
operating microscope to a robot so that the microscope could be used as both a
navigation tool and a vision enhancing tool. By the early 1990s, prototype
systems were developed in which the operating microscope head was connected
to six-degree-of-freedom robots. Both floor-based and ceiling-mounted robotic
systems were developed that were able to use microscope focal points as
pointers for navigation. However, because both systems required significant
support for day-to-day function and were sometimes cumbersome to maneuver,
they were installed and used only in a few centers in the United States and
Europe (Figures 1 and 2). Nevertheless, the lessons learned from these robotic
