Overall Strategy for Patient-Instrument Stabilization for an Office-based Ear Surgical Procedure

A novel medical device allows the surgical treatment for patients with recurrent Otitis Media with Effusion to be conducted in an office setting under local anesthesia. For a conscious patient, the patient-instrument stabilization is critical for the surgical procedure as any small head movement might cause trauma to the tympanic membrane and the delicate ossicles chain in the middle ear. A two-pronged approach, consisting of a patient-centric method and a device-centric method, is presented in this paper. The patient-centric methods aim to affect the psychological state of the patient positively so that he/she feels calm and settled during the operation; and through a game with feedback mechanism, actively maintains his/her head still to gain reward points. The device-centric approach mitigates any small movements the patient might still make by building a control system that views any head movement as disturbances and compensate the disturbance through disturbance-observer based motion compensation. Through this strategy, the patient-instrument stabilization is achieved.