Tele-micro-surgery system with intelligent user interface

This paper describes a master-slave type tele-micro-surgical system with an intelligent user interface. To enhance the accuracy and the rigidity of the slave-manipulator, multicircular guides were adopted for the rotational degrees of freedom. To increase the operability of the system, an "antishadow" technique was used and the 3D relative information was presented on a 2D display. Furthermore, the anti-shadow was processed using a real-time tracking vision system to guide the slave-manipulator to the target position automatically. It took approximately 25 minutes to suture a 1 mm diameter artificial micro-blood-vessel using the system. The carotid artery of a rat with a diameter of 0.3 mm was also successfully sutured.