This work introduces a robot system for minimally invasive frameless stereotactic neurosurgery. The system consists of a robot arm for precise positioning of surgical tools, a vision system for intro-operative registration, and a preoperative planning system. The robot is a custom designed accurate arm with five degree-of-freedom. The vision system uses two cameras to automatically generate the target position of the robot The robot can be controlled autonomously as well as interactively through an intuitive way. Experiments and clinical trials approve the robot system is effective and powerful.

Telesurgery is an interdisciplinary field of teleoperated robotics and robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery, and has good promising future. In this work, the structure and work flow of the tele-neurosurgery are addressed at first. Then the key technologies involved, including our newly developed surgical robot, untouched methodology in localizing marks for registration, video overlay and surgical simulation, video transmission and network communication, and safeguards, are discussed, which guarantee the safety and feasibility of the clinical telesurgery. In the end, the first remote clinical stereo tactic neurosurgery is presented.

A computer and robot assisted telesurgical system for stereotactic neurosurgery is presented in this paper. Using the user friendly interface for surgical planning, the surgeons can make the surgical planning on the model reconstructed in the computer, and marker registration is used to create the mapping between the patient's head and the 3D-brain model. When appropriate entrance position on the skull and entrance trajectory are determined through the surgical planning, they are exported to remote physical medical robotic system, via the Internet, for real-world execution. Remote robotic system is not only used as a navigational tool to direct the surgery planning, but also used as an instrument platform to assist surgeons to accomplish the operation. This computer and robot assisted tele-neurosurgery system has been successfully used in clinical application.

This paper introduces the research project of robot assisted minimally invasive neurosurgery. Using visualization technology, the system reconstructs and displays the 3D model of the patient's inner structure in the computer. Thus the surgeons can plan the surgery on the model in the computer. Marker registration is used to create the mapping between the patient's head and the 3D-brain model. Robot arm is used as a navigator to direct the surgery planning and as an instrument platform to assist surgeons to accomplish the operation. The results of the clinical application are given to show that the robotic system is effective.