Innovative polymer-based shaft instruments for minimally invasive surgery.

Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has become an important field in the health care sector over the last decade. Still, there is the need for improving existing instruments and developing new tools providing increased functionality. This work presents innovative solutions and experimental results for a new generation of innovative polymer-based shaft instruments for minimally invasive surgery.

Combined endo- and exoscopic semi-robotic manipulator system for image guided operations.

This paper describes the development of a robotic assistance system for image guided operations. To minimize operation time, a multimodal user interface enables freehand robotic manipulation of an extracorporeal stereoscopic digital camera (exoscope) and an endoscope. The surgeon thereby wears a head-mounted unit with a binocular display, a head tracker, a microphone and earphones.