Abstract
Robots for minimally invasive surgery introduce many advantages, but still require the surgeon to alternatively control the surgical instruments and the endoscope. This work aims at providing autonomous navigation of the endoscope during a surgical procedure. The autonomous endoscope motion was based on kinematic tracking of the surgical instruments and integrated with the da Vinci Research Kit. A preclinical usability study was conducted by 10 urologists. They carried out an ex vivo orthotopic neobladder reconstruction twice, using both traditional and autonomous endoscope control. The usability of the system was tested by asking participants to fill standard system usability scales. Moreover, the effectiveness of the method was assessed by analyzing the total procedure time and the time spent with the instruments out of the field of view. The average system usability score overcame the threshold usually identified as the limit to assess good usability (average score = 73.25 > 68). The average total procedure time with the autonomous endoscope navigation was comparable with the classic control (p = 0.85 > 0.05), yet it significantly reduced the time out of the field of view (p = 0.022 < 0.05). Based on our findings, the autonomous endoscope improves the usability of the surgical system, and it has the potential to be an additional and customizable tool for the surgeon that can always take control of the endoscope or leave it to move autonomously.
Highlights
IntroductionModern robotic systems still require the operator to manually control at least two surgical tools and an endoscope (Attanasio et al, 2021)
(Connor et al, 2020; Kranzfelder et al, 2013)
We investigated the use of an autonomous endoscope navigation system referred to as SCAN (System for Camera Autonomous Navigation) (Mariani et al, 2020; Da Col et al, 2020)
Summary
Modern robotic systems still require the operator to manually control at least two surgical tools and an endoscope (Attanasio et al, 2021). This approach requires frequent use of foot pedals to change the viewpoint, freezing the teleoperation of the surgical instruments for adjusting the workspace, or switching between instruments. Several urological procedures have been effectively simulated deploying different animal ex vivo anatomical parts. Inverted-U configuration neobladder reconstruction was reproduced using pig intestine tracts (Singh et al, 2021)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
