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IRIS: Integrated Robotic Intraocular Snake | IEEE Conference Publication | IEEE Xplore

IRIS: Integrated Robotic Intraocular Snake


Abstract:

Retinal surgery is one of the most technically challenging surgical disciplines. Many robotic systems have been developed to enhance the surgical capabilities. However, v...Show More

Abstract:

Retinal surgery is one of the most technically challenging surgical disciplines. Many robotic systems have been developed to enhance the surgical capabilities. However, very few of them provide the surgeon the dexterity within the patient's eye to enable more flexible, more advanced surgical procedures. This paper presents a sub-millimeter intraocular dexterous robot, the Integrated Robotic Intraocular Snake (IRIS). The variable neutral-line mechanism is used to provide very high dexterity with a very small form factor. The IRIS distal dexterous unit is 0.9 mm in diameter and about 3 mm in length. It enables two rotational degrees of freedom at the distal end of the ophthalmic instruments. The analysis on contact mechanics provides a reference for the adjustment of the wire pretension. Redundant actuation is implemented by using one motor for each wire. A motion scaling transmission is developed to overcome the suboptimal resolution of the motors. A scale-up model of the IRIS is built for initial experimental evaluation. Preliminary results show that the scale-up IRIS can provide large range of motion. For given bending angle, the kinematic model can estimate the desired wire translation when the friction is not significant. The first prototype of the actual-scale IRIS is assembled and tested.
Date of Conference: 26-30 May 2015
Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 02 July 2015
ISBN Information:
Print ISSN: 1050-4729
PubMed ID: 26405561
Conference Location: Seattle, WA, USA

I. Introduction

Retinal microsurgery refers to a family of microsurgical procedures that treat retinal diseases such as retina detach-ment’ macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, epiretinal membrane, and retinal vein occlusion. Retinal microsurgery is one of the most technically challenging and high-consequence surgical disciplines. In the operating room, a surgical microscope is positioned above the patient's eye to provide magnified visualization of the posterior of the eye, as shown in Fig. 1. Small instruments, e.g., 23 Ga with 0.65 mm diameter, are inserted through trocars on the sclera to operate at the back of the eye. The surgeon needs to control the instrument motion in a very fine and precise manner to handle the delicate eye tissue. Due to the trocar constraint at the sclerotomy, the instrument motion is coupled with the eye movement. If the surgeon intends to keep the patient's eye still, only three rotational degrees of freedom (DOF) about the sclerotomy and one translational DOF along the instrument axis are allowed. This concept is termed as remote center-of-motion (RCM) in robotics, devised by Taylor et al. [1]. The lateral translation of the tool will move the patient's eye, causing change of the view in the microscope and possibly relative motion between the instrument and the retina, which is potentially risky when the instrument tip is close to the retina. This constraint limits not only the instrument workspace inside the patient's eye, but also the orientation of the instrument at a given position.

Retinal microsurgery: (a) Position of the patient and the lead surgeon in the operating room. (b) The layout of the surgical instruments in the eye during ERM peeling. A straight forceps tool is used to perform ERM peeling.

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References

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