μRALP and Beyond: Micro-Technologies and Systems for Robot-Assisted Endoscopic Laser Microsurgery.

Laser microsurgery is the current gold standard surgical technique for the treatment of selected diseases in delicate organs such as the larynx. However, the operations require large surgical expertise and dexterity, and face significant limitations imposed by available technology, such as the requirement for direct line of sight to the surgical field, restricted access, and direct manual control of the surgical instruments. To change this status quo, the European project μRALP pioneered research towards a complete redesign of current laser microsurgery systems, focusing on the development of robotic micro-technologies to enable endoscopic operations.

Preclinical Performance Evaluation of a Robotic Endoscope for Non-Contact Laser Surgery.

Despite great efforts, transoral robotic laser surgery has not been established clinically. Patient benefits are yet to be proven to accept shortcomings of robotic systems. In particular, laryngeal reachability and transition from microscope to accurate endoscopic laser ablation have not been achieved.

Stereo vision-based tracking of soft tissue motion with application to online ablation control in laser microsurgery.

Recent research has revealed that image-based methods can enhance accuracy and safety in laser microsurgery. In this study, non-rigid tracking using surgical stereo imaging and its application to laser ablation is discussed. A recently developed motion estimation framework based on piecewise affine deformation modeling is extended by a mesh refinement step and considering texture information.

Soft tissue motion tracking with application to tablet-based incision planning in laser surgery.

Purpose: Recent research has revealed that incision planning in laser surgery deploying stylus and tablet outperforms micromanipulator control. However, vision-based adaption to dynamic surgical scenes has not been addressed so far. In this study, scene motion compensation for tablet-based planning by means of tissue deformation tracking is discussed.

Comparative study on surface reconstruction accuracy of stereo imaging devices for microsurgery.

Purpose: Processing stereoscopic image data is an emerging field. Especially in microsurgery that requires sub-millimeter accuracy, application of stereo-based methods on endoscopic and microscopic scenarios is of major interest. In this context, direct comparison of stereo-based surface reconstruction applied to several camera settings is presented.