Design and kinematic characterization of a surgical manipulator with a focus on treating osteolysis

This paper presents a cable-driven dexterous manipulator with a large, open lumen. One specific application for the manipulator is the treatment of the degeneration of bone tissue (osteolysis) during a less-invasive hip revision surgery. Rigid tools used in traditional approaches limit the surgeons' ability to comprehensively treat the osteolysis due to the complex geometries of the lesion. The surgical scenario, testing, kinematic modeling, and image-based inverse kinematics are described. Testing shows 94% coverage of a lesion wall; the kinematic model describes manipulator notch positions within 0.15 mm, while the image-based inverse kinematics has 0.36 mm error. This manipulator is potentially useful in treating osteolytic lesions through (1) effective lesion exploration compared to conventional techniques, and (2) rapidly performing inverse kinematics from visual feedback.

Influence of tool geometry on drilling performance of cortical and trabecular bone

Minimally invasive surgery poses high demands on tool design. The goal was to measure the influence of drill bit geometry on maximum thrust forces required for drilling, and compare this relative to the known influence of feed rate and bone composition. Blind holes were drilled perpendicular to the iliac crest up to 10 mm depth in cadaveric pelvic bones of 20 pigs (adolescent) and 11 goats (full grown) with eight substantially different drill bits of ∅ 3-3.2 mm. Subsequently, boreholes were drilled perpendicular to the ilium with the same drill bits at three different feed rates (0.58 mm/s, 0.83 mm/s, 1.08 mm/s). The mean maximum thrust force ranges from 10 to 110 N for cortical bone, and from 3 to 65 N for trabecular bone. The results show that both drill bit geometry and feed rate have a significant influence on the maximum thrust forces, with a dominant influence of drill bit geometry in terms of shape of the flutes, sharpness of cutting edges and value of point angle. The differences in thrust forces between cortical and trabecular bone are substantial for all measured conditions. The measured values can be used for drill design.