IROS 2011 Workshop: Image-Guided Medical Robotic Interventions

Organizers

Abstract

Medical robotic systems strive to make surgical interventions less invasive, less risky for both patients and clinicians, more efficient, less costly, and capable of achieving better patient outcomes. Increasing the targeting accuracy during robot-assisted minimally invasive surgical procedures requires the integration of pre-operative plans and intra-operative control. These planners require the development of models of the surgical instruments and their environment. While the controllers generally rely on image-guided feedback from a clinical imaging system, such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance (MR), or ultrasound images. The focus of this workshop is to bring together researchers that use clinical imaging modalities to plan and control procedures for robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery. In addition, medical robotic systems used in conjunction with clinical imaging modalities will also be discussed.

List of Topics

Pre-operative tool-tissue interaction modeling and planning; Image-guided techniques to control the path of surgical instruments, Methods to integrate pre-operative plans and intra-operative control; MR-compatible systems.

List of Presenters with affiliations

• Prof. Jaydev Desai, University of Maryland
       Presentation Title: Challenges in MRI-guided interventions: From Macro-scale to Meso-scale

Biography: Dr. Jaydev P. Desai is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) and the Director of the Robotics, Automation, and Medical Systems (RAMS) Laboratory. He completed his undergraduate studies from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India, in 1993 with a B.Tech degree. He received his M.A. in Mathematics in 1997, M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics in 1995 and 1998 respectively, all from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award and the Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award. He was an invited speaker at the 2011 National Academy of Sciences’ Distinctive Voices @ The Beckman Center and has also been invited to attend the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) 2011 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. His research interests include image-guided surgical robotics, haptics, reality-based soft-tissue modeling for surgical simulation, model-based teleoperation in robot-assisted surgery, and cellular manipulation. He is currently the member of the Haptics Symposium Committee, co-chair of the Surgical Robotics Technical Committee of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, and a member of the Editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering and IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine. He is also a member of the ASME and IEEE.

• Prof. Pierre Dupont, Children’s Hospital Boston/Harvard Medical School

Presentation Title: Image-based Design of Procedure-specific Robots

Biography: Pierre E. Dupont leads the newly established Pediatric Cardiac Bioengineering Program at Children’s Hospital Boston and holds the Edward P. Marram Chair of Pediatric Cardiac Bioengineering. His academic appointments include Visiting Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. His research group develops robotic instrumentation and imaging technology for minimally invasive surgery. He received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA. After graduation, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. He subsequently moved to Boston University, Boston, MA, USA where, until recently, he was a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. He is an IEEE Fellow and winner of the 2010 King-Sun Fu Best Paper Award of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

• Prof. Paolo Fiorini, University of Verona

Biography: Paolo Fiorini, received the Laurea degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Padova, (Italy), the MSEE from the University of California at Irvine (USA), and the Ph.D. in ME from UCLA (USA). From 1985 to 2000, he was with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, where he worked on telerobotic and teloperated systems for space exploration. From 2000 to 2010 he was an Associate Professor of Control Systems at the School of Science of the University of Verona (Italy) where he founded the ALTAIR robotics laboratory with his students. He is currently Full Professor of Computer Science at the University of Verona. His research focuses on teleoperation for surgery, service and exploration robotics and is funded by several European and Italian Projects. He is an IEEE Fellow (2009).

• Prof. Gregory Fischer, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Presentation Title: A Modular Approach to Rapid Development of MRI Guided Surgical Systems

Biography: Gregory Fischer is a faculty member at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Engineering with an appointment in Biomedical Engineering. He received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in Mechanical Engineering in 2008 where he was part of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Computer Integrated Surgery (ERC-CISST). Dr. Fischer’s primary research focus is on developing enabling technologies for MR-guided surgical interventions including fiber optic sensors, piezoelectric and pneumatic actuators, haptics and teleoperation, modular robot control systems and application testbeds. He is the director of the WPI Automation and Interventional Medicine (AIM) Robotics Research Laboratory (http://aimlab.wpi.edu/). The focus of the research in the AIM Lab is on medical robotics – the link that allows us to enable “closed loop medicine” by using real-time feedback to guide a surgical procedure. In order to take the most advantage of robots in surgery, we work towards integrating real-time medical imaging with the interventional procedure to provide as much information to a surgeon during a procedure as possible and using that information in a way to produce better outcomes. We have developed a modular approach to MRI-compatible robotics including the software, control hardware and mechanical systems and have used this approach to develop robotic systems for image-guided diagnosis and therapy of prostate cancer and for stereotactic neurosurgery where we can perform surgical manipulation under live MR imaging.

• Prof. Rao Gullapalli, University of Maryland

Presentation Title: Image Guided Interventions: Physics and Clinical Challenges

Biography: Dr. Gullapalli is an Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology and is the Director of the Core for Translational Research in Imaging @ Maryland (C-TRIM) and the Magnetic Resonance Research Center at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He also holds a secondary appointment at the Fischell Department of Biongineering at the University of Maryland College Park facility. Dr. Gullapalli’s research involves the development and application of advanced multi-parametric MRI/MRS techniques in the diagnosis of cancer, and studying pathophysiological changes following traumatic brain injury. Specifically, his interests are in developing multi-parametric techniques to minimize sampling errors by accurately assessing tissue and targeting biopsies through real-time image guided techniques using robotic assistance, and to provide optimal therapy to cancerous tissues using RF-ablative procedures aided by MR thermography under continuous imaging. More recently he has been very active in developing a centralized core for translation imaging that includes MRI, PET, CT and other imaging modalities. Prior to joining University of Maryland Baltimore, Dr. Gullapalli worked as a Senior Clinical Scientist at Picker International (currently Philips Medical Systems) where he was responsible for developing several rapid MR imaging techniques.

• Prof. Gregory D. Hager, Johns Hopkins University

Presentation Title: Video Guidance for Human-Machine Collaborative Intervention

Biography: Gregory D. Hager is a Professor and Chair of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University and the Deputy Director of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Computer Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology. His research interests include time-series analysis of image data, image-guided robotics, medical applications of image analysis and robotics, and human-computer interaction. He is the author of more than 220 peer-reviewed research articles and books in the area of robotics and computer vision. In 2006, he was elected a fellow of the IEEE for his contributions in Vision-Based Robotics.

• Prof. Robert Howe, Harvard University

Presentation Title: Cathbots: Ultrasound-Guided Beating Heart Surgery

Biography: Robert D. Howe is Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Engineering, Area Dean for Bioengineering, and Associate Dean for Academic Programs in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Dr. Howe founded the Harvard BioRobotics Laboratory in 1990, which investigates the roles of sensing and mechanical design in motor control, in both humans and robots. His research interests focus on manipulation, the sense of touch, and human-machine interfaces. Biomedical applications of this work include the development of robotic and image-guided approaches to minimally invasive surgical procedures. Dr. Howe earned a bachelors degree in physics from Reed College, then worked as a design engineer in the electronics industry in Silicon Valley. He received a doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 1990, and then joined the faculty at Harvard. Among his honors are the National Science Foundation Young Investigator, as well as Best Paper awards at mechanical engineering, robotics, and surgery conferences.

• Dr. Rainer Konietschke, German Aerospace Center – DLR

Presentation Title: Minimally Invasive Surgical Procedures with the DLR MiroSurge Robotic System

Biography: Rainer Konietschke received his Dipl.-Ing. degree in mechanical engineering from the Technical University of Munich in 2002 and at the same time his master’s degree from the Ecole Centrale Paris. Since then, he has been working at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, DLR, in the field of medical robotics, kinematics, optimization, and optimal surgery planning. He received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Munich in 2007. He coordinated the efforts of DLR in the EC-funded projects AccuRobAs and SAFROS. Currently he is vice coordinator of the medical group at DLR.

• Prof. Ken Masamune, University of Tokyo

Presentation Title: Needle Guidance Robot and Augmented Reality System for On-site MRI Guided Surgery

Biography: Ken Masamune received the Ph.D. degree in precision machinery engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1999. From 1995 to 1999, he was a Research Associate in the Department of Precision Machinery Engineering, the University of Tokyo. From 2000 to 2004, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biotechnology, Tokyo Denki University, Tokyo. Since 2005, he has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanoinformatics, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo. His current research interests include computer-aided surgery, especially medical robotics and visualization devices and systems for surgery.

• Prof. Sarthak Misra, University of Twente

Presentation Title: Predicting Target Motions for Planning of Medical Interventions

Biography: Sarthak Misra joined the University of Twente as an Assistant Professor in August 2009. He is a member of the Control Engineering Group and MIRA – Institute for Biomedical Technology and Technical Medicine. Sarthak obtained his doctoral degree in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA. Prior to commencing his studies at Johns Hopkins, he worked for three years as a dynamics and controls analyst at MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates on the International Space Station Program. Sarthak received his Master of Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He is the recipient of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) VENI award, Link Foundation fellowship, McGill Major fellowship, and NASA Space Flight Awareness award. Sarthak’s broad research interests are primarily in the area of applied mechanics at both macro and micro scales. He is interested in the modeling and control of electro-mechanical systems with applications to medical robotics.

• Prof. Philippe Poignet, University of Montpellier 2 – LIRMM

Presentation Title: Robust 3D motion tracking for robotic-assisted beating heart surgery

Biography: Philippe Poignet received the M.E and Ph.D. degrees in control engineering from the University of Nantes, France, in 1992 and 1995, respectively. He is currently Full Professor at the University of Montpellier 2 doing his research at the LIRMM laboratory. He leads the DEXTER team working on design and control of robots for manipulation and more particularly the Medical Robotics group. His research interests include robot identification, nonlinear control and the applications to surgical robotics and rehabilitation. He has been or is involved in several national and European projects focusing on medical robotics and has co-authored over 60 peer reviewed publications. He is also co-organizer of the European Summer Schools in Surgical Robotics.

Tentative Workshop Schedule

15:15 – 15:25:Coffee Break