Grinding trajectory generator in robot-assisted laminectomy surgery

Int J Comput Assist Radiol Surg. 2021 Mar;16(3):485-494. doi: 10.1007/s11548-021-02316-1. Epub 2021 Jan 28.

Abstract

Purpose: Grinding trajectory planning for robot-assisted laminectomy is a complicated and cumbersome task. The purpose of this research is to automatically obtain the surgical target area from the CT image, and based on this, formulate a reasonable robotic grinding trajectory.

Methods: We propose a deep neural network for laminae positioning, a trajectory generation strategy, and a grinding speed adjusting strategy. These algorithms can obtain surgical information from CT images and automatically complete grinding trajectory planning.

Results: The proposed laminae positioning network can reach a recognition accuracy of 95.7%, and the positioning error is only 1.12 mm in the desired direction. The simulated surgical planning on the public dataset has achieved the expected results. In a set of comparative robotic grinding experiments, those using the speed adjustment algorithm obtained a smoother grinding force.

Conclusion: Our work can automatically extract laminar centers from the CT image precisely to formulate a reasonable surgical trajectory plan. It simplifies the surgical planning process and reduces the time needed for surgeons to perform such a cumbersome operation manually.

Keywords: Deep learning; Image-guided surgery; Laminectomy; Surgical planning.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Humans
  • Laminectomy / instrumentation*
  • Laminectomy / methods
  • Neural Networks, Computer
  • Normal Distribution
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Robotic Surgical Procedures / instrumentation*
  • Robotic Surgical Procedures / methods
  • Robotics / methods
  • Spinal Stenosis / diagnostic imaging
  • Spinal Stenosis / physiopathology
  • Surgery, Computer-Assisted / instrumentation*
  • Surgery, Computer-Assisted / methods
  • Tomography, X-Ray Computed / methods