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Inside an MRI, a Non-Metallic Robot Performs Prostate Surgery

posted by CoolHand on Friday July 10 2015, @02:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the robot-parade dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

One of the holy grails of robotic surgery is the ability to perform minimally invasive procedures guided by real-time scans from a magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, machine. The problem is the space inside MRI scanners is tight for a person, let alone a person and a robot. What's more, these machines use very strong magnetic fields, so metal is not a good thing to place inside of them, a restriction that is certainly a problem for robots.

Now researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) are developing a MRI-compatible robotic surgery tool that can overcome those limitations. Their system isn't made of metal, but instead has plastic parts and ceramic piezoelectric motors that allow it to work safely inside an MRI.

That area is uncomfortably near other important organs. Let's hope the scale on the monitor is 1:1...

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  • (Score: 1) by zaxus on Friday July 10 2015, @07:51PM

    by zaxus (3455) on Friday July 10 2015, @07:51PM (#207610)

    How come the surgery bot needs real time imaging? Can't it work with just a few images?

    The robots are not autonomous. There are human doctors controlling the robotic arms and actually conducting the surgery. The robot is really just an extension of the surgeon.

    "Surgical robots" is really not an accurate name. More like "surgical avatar."

    --
    "I do have a cause, though. It is obscenity...I'm for it." - Tom Lerher

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2015, @08:08PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2015, @08:08PM (#207620)

    The old name I remember is "teleoperator", https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/teleoperator [wiktionary.org]
    Some marketing droid must have decided that "robotic surgery" sounded higher tech?

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by deimtee on Friday July 10 2015, @10:24PM

    by deimtee (3272) on Friday July 10 2015, @10:24PM (#207669) Journal

    I can remember when the term was "waldo".
    But the "where is he?" books have probably killed that.

    --
    If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 11 2015, @01:06AM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 11 2015, @01:06AM (#207722) Journal

    If I read the article correctly, the goal is to make these things autonomous. Right now, the doctor does the actual needle insertion, but the robot autonomously moves about the MRI chamber to position that needle. Short term goal is to have these things approved for "simple" uses, long term goal is to get them approved for more complex tasks. Ultimately, a doctor can have a coffee in one hand, while he monitors and directs the procedure(s) with the other hand.