Development and experimental verification of micro active forceps for microsurgery

The final goal of the authors' research is establishing a new method applicable to today's most difficult microsurgery on the retina. As a first step, a new type of micro forceps is designed and prototyped. It has two typical features conventional forceps don't have: (1) an active joint which enlarges the operable area on the retina; and (2) a thin optical fiberscope built into the stem enables the surgeon to obtain a lateral view of the diseased part along with the top view-a conventional eye surgeon could only get the top view through the cornea via a binocular microscope. It is very useful visual information to see the distance between the tool's tip and the retina. Thus a drastic improvement of fine operations can be achieved. Moreover, the effectiveness of the micro active forceps was confirmed by a maneuvrability test using pig's eyeballs.