Learning intraoperative organ manipulation with context-based reinforcement learning.

Purpose: Automation of sub-tasks during robotic surgery is challenging due to the high variability of the surgical scenes intra- and inter-patients. For example, the pick and place task can be executed different times during the same operation and for distinct purposes. Hence, designing automation solutions that can generalise a skill over different contexts becomes hard.

Autonomous pick-and-place using the dVRK.

Purpose: Robotic-assisted partial nephrectomy (RAPN) is a tissue-preserving approach to treating renal cancer, where ultrasound (US) imaging is used for intra-operative identification of tumour margins and localisation of blood vessels. With the da Vinci Surgical System (Sunnyvale, CA), the US probe is inserted through an auxiliary access port, grasped by the robotic tool and moved over the surface of the kidney. Images from US probe are displayed separately to the surgical site video within the surgical console leaving the surgeon to interpret and co-registers information which is challenging and complicates the procedural workflow.

Image Compositing for Segmentation of Surgical Tools Without Manual Annotations.

Producing manual, pixel-accurate, image segmentation labels is tedious and time-consuming. This is often a rate-limiting factor when large amounts of labeled images are required, such as for training deep convolutional networks for instrument-background segmentation in surgical scenes. No large datasets comparable to industry standards in the computer vision community are available for this task.

Ultrasound 3D reconstruction of malignant masses in robotic-assisted partial nephrectomy using the PAF rail system: a comparison study.

Purpose: In robotic-assisted partial nephrectomy (RAPN), the use of intraoperative ultrasound (IOUS) helps to localise and outline the tumours as well as the blood vessels within the kidney. The aim of this work is to evaluate the use of the pneumatically attachable flexible (PAF) rail system for US 3D reconstruction of malignant masses in RAPN. The PAF rail system is a novel device developed and previously presented by the authors to enable track-guided US scanning.