MARS — Motor assisted robotic stereotaxy system

We report on the design, setup and first results of a robotized system for stereotactic neurosurgery. It features three translational and two rotational axes, as well as a motorized MicroDrive, thereby resembling the Zamorano-Duchovny (ZD) design of stereotactic frames (inomed Medizintechnik GmbH). Both rotational axes intersect in one point, the Center of the Arc, facilitating trajectory planning. We used carbon fiber-reinforced plastic to reduce the weight of the system. The robot can be mounted to standard operating table's side rails and can be transported on an operation theatre (OT) instrument table. We discuss the design paradigms, the resulting design and the actual robot. Kinematic calculations for the robot based on the Denavit-Hartenberg (DH) rules are presented. Positioning accuracy of our system is determined using two perpendicular cameras mounted on an industrial robot. The results are compared to a manual ZD system. We found that the robot's mean position deviation is 0.231 mm with a standard deviation of 0.076 mm.