Abstract
Retinal surgery continues to be one of the most technical demanding surgeries for its high manipulation accuracy requirement, small and constrained workspace, and delicate retinal tissue. Robotic systems have the potential to enhance and expand the capabilities of surgeons during retinal surgery. Thus, focusing on retinal vessel bypass surgery, a master-slave robot system is developed in this paper. This robotic system is designed based on characteristics of retinal vascular bypass surgery and analysis of the surgical workspace in eyeball. A novel end-effector of two degrees of freedom is designed and a novel remote center of motion mechanism is adopted in the robot structure. The kinematics and the mapping relationship are then established, the gravity compensation control strategy and the hand tremor elimination algorithm are applied to achieve the high motion accuracy. The experiments on an artificial eyeball and an in vitro porcine eye are conducted, verifying the feasibility of this system.
Highlights
Retinal vein occlusion (RVO), as the main cause of blindness in retinal vascular disease after diabetic retinopathy [1], has affected estimated 16.4 million adults worldwide [2]
The target retinal tissue is as thin as 25 μm and the retinal vessel diameter is as tiny as 80 μm, while surgeon physiological hand tremor’s amplitude is 182 μm [3]
Yang et al in Beihang University have researched on the robotic system for eye surgery for years, proposed corneal hyper-viscoelastic model [15], investigated needle insertion force in robot assisted corneal suturing [16, 17], and developed a robot assistance for retinal surgery [18]
Summary
Retinal vein occlusion (RVO), as the main cause of blindness in retinal vascular disease after diabetic retinopathy [1], has affected estimated 16.4 million adults worldwide [2]. Wei et al [8] developed a novel hybrid two-armed microsurgical robot, and each arm consists of a two DoF intraocular dexterity manipulator and a. Yang et al in Beihang University have researched on the robotic system for eye surgery for years, proposed corneal hyper-viscoelastic model [15], investigated needle insertion force in robot assisted corneal suturing [16, 17], and developed a robot assistance for retinal surgery [18]. Little research has investigated robotic assisted RVBS in the previous works, and further studies are needed to address the motion error compensation and the tremor canceling in the microsurgical robotic systems.
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