Robotic transcranial magnetic stimulation in the treatment of depression: a pilot study.

There has been an increasing demand for robotic coil positioning during repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) treatment. Accurate coil positioning is crucial because rTMS generally targets specific brain regions for both research and clinical application with other reasons such as safety, consistency and reliability and individual variablity. Some previous studies have employed industrial robots or co-robots and showed they can more precisely stimulate the target cortical regions than traditional manual methods.