Improved depth perception with three-dimensional auxiliary display and computer generated three-dimensional panoramic overviews in robot-assisted laparoscopy

GEC-ESTRO/ACROP recommendations for performing bladder-sparing treatment with brachytherapy for muscle-invasive bladder carcinoma

The standard treatment for muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) is a radical cystectomy with pelvic lymph node dissection with or without neoadjuvant chemotherapy. In selected cases a bladder sparing approach is possible, for example a limited surgical excision combined with external beam radiotherapy and brachytherapy. To perform brachytherapy flexible catheters have to be implanted in the bladder wall. The implantation is done either by the open retropubic approach or the endoscopic surgical approach. The largest experience for brachytherapy is with low-dose rate and pulsed-dose rate, although some short-term experience with high-dose rate is also reported. The main advantage for this technique is the conservation of bladder function, with comparable local control rates as for cystectomy series in selected cases. The GEC-ESTRO/ACROP (Groupe Européen de Curiethérapie-European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology / Advisory Committee on Radiation Oncology Practice) recommendations to perform bladder implantations and brachytherapy as a treatment option for MIBC are described.

Augmented Reality for Assistance of Total Knee Replacement

The aim of this work was the development of a surgical assistance system based on augmented reality to support joint replacement procedures and implantation of prosthetic knee. Images of the scene were captured in order to detect the visual markers located on the lateral surface of the patient’s leg for overlapping the 3D models of the prosthesis and the joint, as well as the tool used by the medical specialist. With the marker identification, it was possible to compute its position and orientation for locating the virtual models, obtaining a monitoring system for giving accurate information about the procedure. Also it can be used as training platform for surgeons, without having volunteers or patients for performing real surgeries; instead they can train in a virtual environment. The results have shown an efficient system in terms of cost-benefit relation, taking into account the materials used for developing the system; nevertheless, the accuracy of the algorithm decreases according to the distance between the markers.

Accurate three-dimensional virtual reconstruction of surgical field using calibrated trajectories of an image-guided medical robot

Brain tumor margin removal is challenging because diseased tissue is often visually indistinguishable from healthy tissue. Leaving residual tumor leads to decreased survival, and removing normal tissue causes life-long neurological deficits. Thus, a surgical robotics system with a high degree of dexterity, accurate navigation, and highly precise resection is an ideal candidate for image-guided removal of fluorescently labeled brain tumor cells. To image, we developed a scanning fiber endoscope (SFE) which acquires concurrent reflectance and fluorescence wide-field images at a high resolution. This miniature flexible endoscope was affixed to the arm of a RAVEN II surgical robot providing programmable motion with feedback control using stereo-pair surveillance cameras. To verify the accuracy of the three-dimensional (3-D) reconstructed surgical field, a multimodal physical-sized model of debulked brain tumor was used to obtain the 3-D locations of residual tumor for robotic path planning to remove fluorescent cells. Such reconstruction is repeated intraoperatively during margin clean-up so the algorithm efficiency and accuracy are important to the robotically assisted surgery. Experimental results indicate that the time for creating this 3-D surface can be reduced to one-third by using known trajectories of a robot arm, and the error from the reconstructed phantom is within 0.67 mm in average compared to the model design.