Surgery enabled by ultrasonics

几千年来，用于解剖或碎裂组织的介入手术的手术工具范围没有显著变化。超声波设备具有巨大的潜力，能够实现新的微创手术，提供更高的精度、更低的作用力、更好地保存脆弱的结构、低热损伤，以及更重要的是，使更多的程序能够在门诊或日间手术的基础上进行。为了实现这一潜力，并实现超声波成为微创介入手术的首选技术的愿景，需要一种全新的设备设计方法，以实现微型化并将切割和愈合能力整合到设备中。通过与创新的灵活、触手状的手术机器人集成，我们将把超声波设备深入人体，沿着曲折的路径到达手术部位，以提供无与伦比的精度。通过定制机器人超声波设备，将精确的超声波能量传递到优化手术所需的准确位置，可以在挑战神经、颅底和脊柱程序以及普通外科手术中实现无与伦比的精度。我们将通过量化手术器械在手术部位和周围组织中典型的超声波激励的影响来实现这一点，这些影响包括精确切割、组织损伤(机械损伤、热坏死、空化)以及帮助再生的可能性。我们将在超高速成像测量和生物物理分析方面取得世界领先的进展，补充组织学和临床评估的进展，开发一种综合方法来表征组织损伤和再生。通过这种设备设计的整体方法，我们将创造出为优化手术量身定做的集成机器人-超声波手术设备。

The range of surgical tools for interventional procedures that dissect or fragment tissue has not changed significantly for millennia. There is huge potential for ultrasonic devices to enable new minimal access surgeries, offering higher precision, much lower force, better preservation of delicate structures, low thermal damage and, importantly, enabling more procedures to be carried out on an out-patient or day surgery basis. To realise this potential, and deliver our vision of ultrasonics being the technology of choice for minimal access interventional surgery, a completely new approach to device design is required, to achieve miniaturisation and to incorporate both a cutting and healing capability in the devices. By integrating with innovative flexible, tentacle-like surgical robots, we will bring ultrasonic devices deep into the human body, along tortuous pathways to the surgical site, to deliver unparalleled precision.Unsurpassed precision in challenging neurological, skull-base and spinal procedures as well as in general surgery is attainable through tailoring the robotic-ultrasonic devices to deliver the exact ultrasonic energy to the exact locations required to optimise the surgery. We will achieve this by quantifying the effects of the ultrasonic excitations typical of surgical devices in tissues, at and surrounding the site of surgery, in terms of precision cutting, tissue damage (mechanical damage, thermal necrosis, cavitation) but also the potential to aid regeneration. We will make world-leading advances in ultra-high speed imaging measurements and biophysical analysis, complementing advances in histology and clinical assessment, to develop a combined approach to the characterisation of both damage and regeneration of tissue. Through this holistic approach to device design, we will create integrated robotic-ultrasonic surgical devices tailored for optimised surgery.