PRIMA-A device for minimally invasive breast cancer surgery

Developments in medical devices and diagnostics have improved quality of life and increased the life expectancy. Cancer is one of the diseases responsible for mortality in the world today and especially breast cancer in women have increased in alarming numbers. This paper gives an insight into a new device and technology which can be used to remove cancer in a minimally invasively surgical procedure. It consists of a robotic surgical machine integrated with a breast scanner and a therapeutic ultrasound frequency to perform this procedure. The idea is to integrate the scanning and therapeutic modality into one unit. PRIMA is a conglomeration of the scanning equipment, a high intensity focussed ultrasound therapy equipment and robotic surgery equipment. It has a portable scanner which scans and detects the presence of a tumour. The detected tumour is analysed and processed using the mechatronics and image processing enabled equipment. The target is fixed and highintensity ultrasound is used to ablate the tumour cells. In this manner, instead of using three different devices, we propose to integrate all of them as a single user-friendly device.