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Project:<\/strong> A robot in mind<\/p>\n\n\n\n Giancarlo Ferrigno is Professor at Politecnico di Milano. It\u2019s a new kind of robot, designed for some of the most delicate operations a surgeon can perform. Background Project: A robot in mind Giancarlo Ferrigno is Professor at Politecnico di Milano.He said:\u201c This is a robotic system for assisting a surgeon during neurosurgery operations. It has been designed for the insertion of instruments like biopsy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","geographic_location":[118,106,110,96,119,120,114,111,121,115,107,122,123,124,125,112,113,130,117,131,108,116,132,133],"collaboration_opportunities":[97,98,99,100,101,102],"technologies":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
He said:\u201c This is a robotic system for assisting a surgeon during neurosurgery operations. It has been designed for the insertion of instruments like biopsy probes or electrodes for deep brain stimulation through small holes in the head of the patient.\u201d
It\u2019s a new kind of robot, designed for some of the most delicate operations a surgeon can perform.
It\u2019s accurate to just a few hundred microns, and is far steadier than a surgeon\u2019s hand. And that\u2019s a big help:
\u201cTo maintain a specific orientation and avoid areas that could be just a few milimetres away from the one that you want to go through, a robot is certainly a lot more accurate,\u201d Ferrigno added.
Neurosurgeon Francesco Cardinale is a specialist in epilepsy surgery.
He helped the robot engineers at Politecnico di Milano understand what doctors really need.
That includes defining the parameters of the software that plans each operation.
One of the system\u2019s innovative features is the feedback from the robot to the surgeon via the hand-held controller.
He said:\u201c The surgeon can control the movements of the active robot using an instrument like that, and at the same time receive feedback of the sensations that he would have operating directly on the brain.\u201d
The robot feedback is amplified to help the surgeon feel his way around the brain.
So what kind of operation could be perfomed with this type of robot?
\u201cDrug-resistant epilepsy, Parkinsons and other motor skill problems like for example dystonia, chronic pain and all types of brain cancer,\u201d said Cardinale.
The robot, developed within the EU\u2019s RoboCast project, is a year away from surgical trials.
In the meantime, the engineers are making it even smarter.
Giancarlo Ferrigno said there\u2019s still more work to do: \u201cThe next step is to work on robots that have their own activity, for example to compensate for the movement of the patient\u2019s head during an operation, as in surgical interventions on patients who remain awake.\u201d
This innovation was made possible by Israel\u2019s continued participation in the official Horizon 2020 fund, managed in Israel by ISERD part of The Israel Innovation Authority (Formerly the Office of the Chief Scientist and MATIMOP). The initiative has taken Israeli R&D to the next level with the help of ground-breaking collaboration between scientists in Israel and Europe, as well as essential funding and support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"