The 34th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC '12)

Tuesday, Aug 28, 2012 – Saturday, Sep 1, 2012

 The EMBC'12 will cover a broad spectrum of topics in biomedical engineering and healthcare technologies, including medical and clinical applications. We are proud to announce μRALP will be participating to this event!

The following research articles will be presented:

• Safe Teleoperation based on Flexible Intraoperative Planning for Robot-Assisted Laser Microsurgery

Abstract— This paper describes a new intraoperative planning system created to improve precision and safety in teleoperated laser microsurgeries. It addresses major safety issues related to real-time control of a surgical laser during teleoperated procedures, which are related to the reliability and robustness of the telecommunication channels. Here, a safe solution is presented, consisting in a new planning system architecture that maintains the flexibility and benefits of real-time teleoperation and keeps the surgeon in control of all surgical actions. The developed system is based on our virtual scalpel system for robot-assisted laser microsurgery, and allows the intuitive use of stylus to create surgical plans directly over live video of the surgical field. In this case, surgical plans are defined as graphic objects overlaid on the live video, which can be easily modified or replaced as needed, and which are transmitted to the main surgical system controller for subsequent safe execution. In the process of improving safety, this new planning system also resulted in improved laser aiming precision and improved capability for higher quality laser procedures, both due to the new surgical plan execution module, which allows very fast and precise laser aiming control. Experimental results presented herein show that, in addition to the safety improvements, the new planning system resulted in a 48% improvement in laser aiming precision when compared to the previous virtual scalpel system.

• New Software Tools for Enhanced Precision in Robot-Assisted Laser Phonomicrosurgery

Abstract— This paper describes a new software package created to enhance precision during robot-assisted laser phonomicrosurgery procedures. The new software is composed of three tools for camera calibration, automatic tumor segmentation, and laser tracking. These were designed and developed to improve the outcome of this demanding microsurgical technique, and were tested herein to produce quantitative performance data. The experimental setup was based on the motorized laser micromanipulator created by Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia and the experimental protocols followed are fully described in this paper. The results show the new tools are robust and effective: The camera calibration tool reduced residual errors (RMSE) to 0.009 ± 0.002 mm under 40x microscope magnification; the automatic tumor segmentation tool resulted in deep lesion segmentations comparable to manual segmentations (RMSE = 0.160 ± 0.028 mm under 40x magnification); and the laser tracker tool proved to be reliable even during cutting procedures (RMSE = 0.073 ± 0.023 mm under 40x magnification). These results demonstrate the new software package can provide excellent improvements to the previous microsurgical system, leading to important enhancements in surgical outcome.