Simulation of Robotic Arm for Spinal Surgeries Engineered to Replace a Surgeon’s Tasks

Abstract

A most common abnormality that affects the vertebrae is the disc prolapse. These conditions normally transpire in lumbosacral region and enmesh the spinal nerve at that point. A detoriation to the motor and sensory nerve at that point has an immediate consequence on that particular organ connected with the ascending and descending tract. Disc prolapse in thoracic region leads either to nerve root irritation or cord compression and it needs an immediate surgery to remove the disc lesion which is usually done by discectomy technique, an invasive spine surgery. However, the proposed system is to create a minimally invasive procedure to detach the disc lesion of the spine. The controlled and patient specific pre-operative planning is done by MIMIC using 3D model of the MRI of that patient. The new techniques on robotic arm like segmentation and surgical simulation will provide information about the positioning of the end effectors. Using 3D model design, the robotic arm with 3 degree of freedom is done by the SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD design software. SimMechanics is a MATLAB tool used for simulation of the physical model which gives control to the robotic arm. Furthermore, the simulation result gives the force used to produce torque at the joints and angle of joint due to torque produced. Finally, we show that the simulation in SimMechanics reduces the error occurrence in proto type construction.