A Medical Robotic Platform for Surgical and Interventional Procedures

近年来，由于机器人辅助手术的有效性，手术和介入机器人技术受到了越来越多的关注，从而减少了并发症，加快了康复速度，缩短了住院时间。从医生的角度来看，机器人通过赋予超人的能力来增加医务人员，例如高速和准确的移动，使有限空间中的高精度手术成为可能。最近的分析(路透社)还显示，2017-2023年医疗机器人行业的预期市场增长率为20.8%。因此，外科手术和介入机器人的研究进展对加拿大的医疗保健和不断发展的生物医药产业都具有迫在眉睫的重要性。尽管最近取得了进展，但手术和介入机器人技术提供了重要的研究机会，包括设计仪器和控制方法，以克服由于小型化、安全性和适应不断变化的条件的要求而带来的挑战。*所要求的设备是一个七自由度医疗机器人机械手，是唯一获得医学研究和开发活动国际认证的经济型桌面机器人，并且工作在离人类很近的地方。由于其认证程序是国际公认的，相关产品的开发和许可过程的复杂性大大降低。这一优势将促进临床前测试和与该行业的进一步合作。所请求模型的灵活控制体系结构还将简化各种传感和控制方法的快速集成，并适应不同的应用，从而增加设备的使用量。*申请的机器人将支持申请者的研究计划，旨在为加拿大新兴的医疗机器人行业和加拿大医疗保健开发新的重要手术和介入性机器人技术。申请者将立即从所要求的设备中受益的研究项目包括：(1)用于医疗干预的图像引导连续体机器人，重点是心脏插管；(2)机器人高强度聚焦超声(HIFU)；以及(3)用于机器人手术的远程机器人平台，重点是神经外科、眼科手术和肺活检。*除了申请者和合作者，他们的研究生和本科生将接受培训，操作最先进的医疗机器人系统，学习先进的机器人测量、控制和导航方法，以及用于医疗应用的体内实验技术。这些技能对他们的学习和加拿大医疗保健和生物医药行业的高需求将是重要的。除了赖尔森大学，这一新设备还将扩大iBest(生物医学工程、科学和技术研究所)及其合作医院的医疗机器人研究能力。*****

Surgical and interventional robotics has received an increasing attention in the recent years due to the effectiveness of robot-assisted procedures, leading to reduced complications, faster recovery and shorter hospitalization. From the physicians' perspective, robots augment the medical staff by imparting superhuman capabilities, such as high motion speed and accuracy, enabling high-precision operations in confined spaces. The recent analysis (by Reuters) also reveals an expected market growth of 20.8% for medical robotics industry during 2017-2023. Therefore, research progress in surgical and interventional robotics is of imminent importance to both healthcare and growing biomedical industry of Canada. Despite its recent progress, surgical and interventional robotics presents significant research opportunities, including design of instruments and control methods to overcome challenges due to the requirements for miniaturization, safety, and adaptation to changing conditions. *** The requested equipment, a seven degrees-of-freedom medical robotic manipulator, is the only economic desktop robot with international certification for medical research and development activities and working in a close proximity to the humans. Because its certification procedure is internationally recognized, the complexity of the development and licensing process for the related products is substantially reduced. This advantage will facilitate pre-clinical testing and further collaborations with the industry. The flexible control architecture of the requested model will also ease rapid integration of various sensing and control methods, and accommodation of different applications, leading to the increased usage of the equipment. *** The requested robot would enable research programs of the applicants aimed at developing new and important surgical and interventional robotic technologies for emerging medical robotics industry of Canada and Canadian healthcare. The research programs of the applicants that will immediately benefit from the requested equipment include projects related to: (1) image-guided continuum robots for medical interventions, with the focus on cardiac catheterization; (2) robotic high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU); and (3) telerobotic platforms for robotic surgery, focusing on neurosurgery, ocular surgery, and lung biopsy. *** Besides the applicants and collaborators, their graduate and undergraduate students will be trained to operate state-of-the-art medical robotic systems, and learn advanced robotic measurement, control, and navigation methods, and in-vivo experimentation techniques for medical applications. These skills will be important to their studies and in high-demand by Canadian healthcare and biomedical industry. In addition to Ryerson university, this new equipment will expand medical robotics research capacity of iBest (Institute for Biomedical Engineering, Science, and Technology) and partner hospitals. *****