Tiny magnet powered robots could one day do brain surgery

Most brain surgery requires doctors to remove part of the skull to access Difficult-to-reach areas or tumours. It’s invasive, risky, and it takes a long time for the patient to recover.

We have developed new, tiny robotic surgical tools that may let surgeons perform “keyhole surgery” on the brain. Even though their Tiny size, our tools can mimic the Packed range of motion of a surgeon’s wrist, creating new possibilities for less-invasive brain surgery.

Robotic surgical tools (around 8 millimetres in diameter) have been used for decades in keyhole surgery for other parts of the body. The Event has been making a tool Tiny enough (3mm in diameter) for neurosurgery.

In a project Directed by the University of Toronto, where I was a postdoctoral fellow, we collaborated with The Hospital for Unwell Children (SickKids) in Canada to develop a set of very Tiny neurosurgery tools.

The tools are only about 3mm in diameter. In a paper published in Science Robotics, we demonstrated these tools could Halt, pull and cut tissue.

Their extremely Tiny size is possible as they are powered not by motors but by external magnetic fields.

Ongoing robotic surgical tools are typically driven by cables connected to electric motors. They work in much the same way as human fingers, which are manipulated by tendons in the hand connected to muscles in the wrist.

However, pulleys smaller than Numerous millimetres wide to control the instruments are Frail and prone to friction, stretch and fracture. This creates challenges in scaling down the instruments, because of difficulties in making the parts of the system, assembling the mechanisms and managing friction in the cables.

Magnetic controls

The new robotic system consists of two parts. The Primary is the tiny tools themselves: a gripper, a scalpel and a set of forceps. The second part is what we call a “coil table”, which is a surgical table with Numerous electromagnetic coils embedded inside.

In this design, the patient would be positioned with their head on top of the embedded coils, and the robotic tools would be inserted into the brain via a Tiny incision.

By altering the amount of electricity flowing into the coils, we can manipulate the magnetic fields, causing the tools to Halt, pull or cut tissue as desired.

In Uncovered brain surgery, the surgeon relies on their own dexterous wrist to pivot the tools and tilt their tips to access Difficult-to-reach areas, such as removing a tumour inside the central cavity of the brain. Unlike other tools, our robotic neurosurgical tools can mimic this with “wristed” movements.

Surprising precision

We tested the tools in pre-clinical trials where we simulated the mechanical properties of the brain tissue they would need to work with. In some tests, we used pieces of tofu and raspberry placed inside a model of the brain.

We compared the performance of these magnetically operated tools with that of standard tools handled by trained surgeons.

We Secured the cuts Achieved with the magnetic scalpel were Reliable and narrow, with an average width of 0.3–0.4mm. That was even more precise than those from traditional hand tools, which ranged from 0.6 to 2.1mm.

As for the grippers, they could Option up the target 76% of the time.

We were surprised by how well the robotic tools performed. However, there is Yet a long way to go until this technology could Assist patients. It can take years, even decades, to develop medical devices, especially surgical robots.

This study is part of a broader project based on years of work Directed by Eric Diller from the University of Toronto, an expert on magnet-driven micro-robots.

Now, the Club wants to make sure the robotic arm and magnetic system can fit comfortably in a hospital operating room. The Club also wants to make it compatible with imaging systems such as fluoroscopy, which uses x-rays. After that, the tools may be ready for clinical trials.

We’re excited about the potential for a new era of minimally invasive neurosurgical tools.

Changyan He, Lecturer, School of Engineering, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.