CIS news

Look around the world, and see what's news in CIS!

• SRI robot technology goes back from OR to battlefield  
• The first dedicated robotic transducer: ProART 
• Philips is to integrate the CorPath 200 cath lab robot 
• Gesture recognition robotic nurses to help surgeons
• New throat surgery technique
• iPod used in orthopaedic surgery
• Mini 1.5T MR scanner from GE (Optima MR430s)
• MRI-Compatible Cannula Receives FDA cleared
• An innovative anatomical educational tool from Hungarian developers 
• Submarine sonar technology to detect stroke

• ICRA Workshop on Mechanisms for Surgical Robotics
• IROS Workshop on Image-Guided Medical Robotic Interventions
• CAOS meeting in London

• Internship at Siemens Corporate Research in medical imaging

ACMIT - the new focus point of CIS research in Austria

The ACMIT (Austrian Center for Medical Innovation and Technology) was founded a year ago, supported by an Austrian national grant for at least 4 years to 

"ACMIT is the Austrian competence center for research & development in medical technologies, focusing on minimally invasive surgery and procedures. We are working on new "active" surgical instruments and highly accurate positioning systems for these tools. Our expertise concentrates in MIS instruments, medical robotics, sensors and work-flow analysis.
ACMIT is a neutral R&D-platform offering various services. Their robotic-related projects include:

• Robot-Assisted and Needle-Based Tumor Treatment
• Remote-Controlled Tool Holders for "Minimally Invasive Procedures"
• Integrated System for Minimally Invasive Autopsy
• Image Guided Patient Positioning and Immobilization for Effective Therapy
• "In-vivo" Robot Systems for Clinical Use

"The research group at ACMIT center has more than 10 years of experience in the development of robot systems for needle based percutaneous interventions. One cornerstone of development has been the B-Rob I and II robot systems. Together with national and international research partners various applications based on this robot system have been developed and successfully evaluated both in vivo and in vitro." An upcoming post will deal with the B-Robs. 

 

Dr. Satava in Budapest

We were extremely pleased and honored to have Dr. Richard Satava visiting Budapest, as the BME Technical University President's guest. He gave two lectures, and for the first time in history, his powerpoint presentation is available in Hungarian (from here). The English version is also available.   

The presentations included a general overview of the recent change of paradigm in medical care: shifting the focus from materials to information and energy. One of the most promising technologies down the road is HIFU (high-intensity focused ultrasound). Since the technology is already existing, it will only take time to see the holomer concept coming to the every-day use, where we will all have a complete medical record of our body to carry around at all times. Probably the best part of the talk was about disruptive technologies that are already around the corner and will certainly change the world as we know it. The message to take home was that "technology is neither good or evil. It all depends how we use it, therefore we must get prepared to become wise and careful users of the new, powerful tools we are developing. The responsibility is ours."
More Satava presentations are available here.
One of his great talks from 2009.

CIS news

• Wonderful video from Carol and Tom, students at Hopkins, playing overnight with the da Vinci
• Robotic autopsy is around the corner--the ACMIT center is also working on it
• CMU's HARP robot updates
• More origami with the da Vinci 
• UW BioRobotics Lab's Kinect hack is getting some attention
• Have some time? Dig down for some quality Hopkins publications
• Latest exoskeletons from Cyberdyne
• Volumetric Interactive 3D for surgical education and training
• Old as it can be: X-ray machine from the attic  
• Watson to be used for health care
• And a new, mobile one from SIEMENS
•  
• Boston University's BioRobotics lab is hiring.  
• Awesome job offerings at Intuitive.

Hopkins Updates

It is great to see how projects are evolving at the CISST/LCSR lab every time I get back. In recent times, the cisst software library has seen major improvements. Now it includes advanced virtualization and shared control features, allowing to interact with various devices (robot, camera, tracker, etc.) in a dynamically changing environment. cisstStereo also got a decent tutorial from Balázs.

"The cisst package is a collection of libraries designed to ease the development of computer assisted intervention systems. One motivation is the development of a Surgical Assistant Workstation ( SAW), which is a platform that combines robotics, stereo vision, and intraoperative imaging (e.g., ultrasound) to enhance a surgeon's capabilities for minimally-invasive surgery (MIS). All software is available under an open source license, which can be found  here. The source code can be obtained from our Subversion (SVN) repository."
The CISST people has already passed a human trial with the Ultrasound support system, and the SAW was popularized lately by Intuitive at the SPIE conference. 
The other flagship project is the Eye robot. "The Steady Hand Eye Robot cooperatively shares control of a surgical tool with the surgeon while meeting the performance, accuracy, and safety requirements of microsurgery."

Almost all of the CISST projects are relying on the cisst, e.g. our neurosurgical project used cisstVector and cisstDevices heavily.

Source: cisst site