How can virtual reality be valuable for doctors specializing in cardiac surgery? A team of Chinese scientists demonstrates this with the creation of a robot to improve the visual fields of doctors during operations.
- Based on virtual reality, this robot developed by a Chinese team can navigate through target areas, so that the surgeon can better visualize and plan potential surgical corrections.
In games, at work, in the hospital… Virtual reality is everywhere. The latest innovation? A robot to accompany doctors during cardiac surgeries. This idea was developed by scientists from the State Key Laboratory of Management and Control of Complex Systems(SKL-MCCS)based in China.
This robot’s superpowers? Better plan operations and improve surgeons’ field of vision when they are in the operating room. “Intraoperative ultrasound is particularly useful because it can guide surgery by providing real-time images of otherwise hidden devices and anatomy”explains Fei-Yue Wang, Director SKL-MCCS and lead author of this study published in IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica.
More specifically, the technique developed is a platform for robotic intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography (TEE), an imaging method that has been proven to diagnose heart disease and guide cardiac surgery procedures.
The robot could be used for clinical tests live
The developed virtual system includes the use of the “3D Slicer” image analysis software, the graphical user interface (GUI), the Matlab engine which provides robotic control algorithms, as well as the PLUS toolkit ( Public software Library for UltraSound imaging research), useful for generating simulated ultrasound images.
Thanks to its database of ultrasound images and its digital platform capable of reconstructing the anatomy, the robot would make it possible to navigate in the target areas, so that the surgeon can better visualize and plan potential surgical corrections.
“The ultimate goal is to integrate the virtual system and the physical robot for in-vivo clinical testing, to provide a new diagnostic and treatment protocol using parallel intelligence in medical operations”says Professor Wang.
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