The key concept behind our technical focus is to use corrected and calibrated fluoroscopic images containing specially shaped robot tip and the anatomy of interest to perform accurate intraoperative modeling and registration without the need of implanted fiducials or direct contact. Our clinical focus will first be on spine procedures, including percutaneous and transpedicular screw placement and percutaneous discectomy. Later, will also explore improvements to illiosacral screw placement, dynamic hip screw placement, knee arthroscopy, total knee replacement, and elbow and shoulder procedures. The novel medical robots will be based on two ideas. One is the development of new parallel robot structures, which by their very nature will better fit the medical requirements of surgery.
Parallel structures are much more compact than the commonly used serial ones.
They are more accurate and their reduced work volume is a big safety advantage in medical applications where the required motions are small. The second idea is the development of a miniature robot that attaches directly to the bone. The miniature robot, which will be more than one order of magnitude smaller than a conventional PUMA, will simplify and even eliminate the need for a separate registration procedure and for tracking bone motion. To be useful for precise procedures, the camera must be calibrated and the images must be corrected from geometric distortion. Then, the images must be correlated and registered to each other.