A Robot-Assisted Surgery System for Spinal Fusion

Abstract

The goal of this work is to develop a robot-assisted surgery system for spinal fusion, which is composed of a robot, a surgical planning system, and an optical tracking system. The system plays roles of assisting surgeon for inserting a pedicle screw in spinal fusion. Compared to pure navigation systems as well as conventional methods for spinal fusion, it is able to achieve better accuracy through compensating for the portending movement of the surgical area. Furthermore, the robot can position and guide needles, drills, and other surgical instruments or conducts drilling/screwing directly. In preoperative surgery, the desired entry point, orientation, and depth of surgical tools for pedicle screw insertion are determined by the surgical planning system based on CT or MR images. Intra-operatively, the position information on the surgical instruments and the targeted surgical areas are obtained by the tracking system and, using that information, a robot conducts the preplanned operation depending on its role while compensating the movement of the surgical area. Two exemplary experiments employing the developed robot-assisted surgery system are conducted.