Reporting by XinZhiyuan
Edit: Peach La Yan
Recently, researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the United States designed an intelligent organization autonomous robot STAR. Without human guidance, the robot successfully performed laparoscopic surgery on the pig's soft tissue, faster and more accurate than a human doctor.
Recently, researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the United States designed an intelligent organization autonomous robot STAR.
Without human guidance, the robot STAR successfully performed laparoscopic surgery, also known as keyhole surgery, on the soft tissues of pigs.
Currently, the study has been published in the Science sub-journal.
Address: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.abj2908
The robot performs surgery on pigs, meaning it's not far from human experimentation. The researchers say this is an important step toward human trials.
83% stitching, STAR is all done
In fact, a small number of surgeries have long been automated, but these robots are often skilled in performing hard tissue-related surgeries, such as orthopedic surgery.
If you let them perform soft tissue and other surgeries on their own, it may not be able to hold it.
Laparoscopic surgery is a challenge even for human doctors, such as reconnecting the intestines without making a large incision in the stomach.
To that end, Justin Opferman of Johns Hopkins University and his colleagues designed an intelligent tissue robot that successfully connected a segment of intestine after it was removed with limited manual intervention.
During the operation, the robot operated on 4 pigs, with a total of 86 stitches.
Among them, two-thirds of the time of surgery, the robot will automatically suture, while the remaining one-third, before trying to suture, the robot needs a doctor to guide in place.
According to reports, 83% of the suture tasks are completed autonomously using this workflow, but the system also needs to be manually adjusted to correct the position of the missing needle.
The results showed that the surgery performed by the STAR robot was significantly better than that performed by humans.
In fact, as early as 2016, the same group of scientists wrote a program for the robot to operate on pigs. They had the robot perform the operation of pulling the pig's intestines out of the body and then suturing them.
This time, the robot successfully completed the task in the narrow abdomen through a small opening. This surgery is more challenging because the organs move rhythmically with the animal's breathing.
Opferman said, "Once you open a patient's body, all the organs in his body are moving, so you are unlikely to make a plan in advance that is similar to where to shoot the knife."
"If you're operating on soft tissue like an intestine, as soon as you touch it, it runs along. Therefore, the robot's plans need to be updated in real time, figuring out what it needs to do and how to complete the task."
If the robot can excel at bowel anastomosis, it would be a procedure that requires a high level of repetitive movement and precision.
Know that connecting the two ends of the intestine is arguably the most challenging step in gastrointestinal surgery, requiring surgeons to suture with precision and consistency.
Even the slightest hand tremor or stitch misalignment can lead to leaks, which can cause catastrophic complications for patients.
How is the STAR robot designed?
Components of the STAR robotic system include medical robotic arms, surgical tools, dual-channel NIR and 3D structured light endoscopic imaging systems. Among them, the standard robotic arm is provided by the manufacturer Kuka.
The researchers say that STAR is actually a visual guidance system specifically designed to stitch soft tissue.
The team equipped STAR with new features that enhance autonomy and improve surgical accuracy, including specialized suture tools and state-of-the-art imaging systems to provide more accurate visualization of the surgical area.
The custom software controls the robot during the suturing process, using a 3D camera on the robot's arm to take images to sense the depth of the robot's body and map the changes inside the patient's abdomen.
STAR enhances the architecture of autonomous control strategies
This autonomous process enables the robot to activate/pause/deactivate the tissue tracking system and detect the tissue's respiratory movements and their deformation.
Inform doctors to re-plan steps, control camera movements, perform different modes of suture planning at uniform and non-uniform spacing, pre-filter to reduce noise, predict the distance of the tool to the tissue, and synchronize the robotic tool with the tissue's respiratory motion and under the Remote Motion Center (RCM).
In the next 5 years, robots will get started
In fact, robot-assisted surgery is already very common around the world. It is estimated that the number of robotic-assisted surgeries exceeded 644,000 in 2017, but they are all assisted surgeries.
As just mentioned, soft tissue surgery is especially difficult for robots because its unpredictability forces robots to adapt quickly to deal with unexpected obstacles.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University designed a novel control system for STAR that adjusts surgical plans in real time like a human surgeon.
Star is special in that it is the first robotic system to plan, adjust and execute soft tissue surgical planning with minimal human intervention.
Opferman said the trial is the first step toward fully autonomous surgery for humans, though it may be decades before this ultimate goal is achieved.
As the results of the research continue to advance, the team will train the robot to slowly operate more and more surgical parts, such as opening the cavity and then closing it, until it is proved that the robot can complete the entire operation process on its own.
"Human trials of robots performing part of the surgery could start within 5 years," he said.
Resources:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2305980-robot-performs-keyhole-surgery-on-pigs-with-little-help-from-doctors/
https://www.techradar.com/news/a-robot-just-performed-autonomous-surgery-on-a-pig-and-were-shook
https://tech.huanqiu.com/article/46ZJ3sKOUOe