Mechanical characterization of bone anchors used with a bone-attached, parallel robot for skull surgery.

Bone-attached robots and microstereotactic frames, intended for deep brain stimulation and minimally invasive cochlear implantation, typically attach to a patient's skull via bone anchors. A rigid and reliable link between such devices and the skull is mandatory in order to fulfill the high accuracy demands of minimally invasive procedures while maintaining patient safety. In this paper, a method is presented to experimentally characterize the mechanical properties of the anchor-bone linkage.