SURGICAL ROBOT CAN PERFORM BRAIN OPERATIONS THROUGH THE PATIENT’S CHEEK

Faster and Less Invasive Epilepsy Brain Surgery Possible with Vanderbilt Robot

Epilepsy is a group of serious neurological disorders that affects millions of people around the world; epileptic seizures are controllable by medication in approximately 70 percent of cases. Brain surgery is one of the options considered in those cases where medication doesn’t work. In general this is a very invasive procedure that can take up to three months to recover from. This may soon change thanks to a surgical robot that has been five years in the making by engineers at Vanderbilt University. Epileptic seizures are typically associated with the hippocampus which is located in the lower part of the brain. A new surgical robot designed by two researchers at Vanderbilt, David Comber and associate professor Eric Barth, enters the brain from below by passing through the patient’s cheek and carefully navigates gaps in the bone. This method of accessing the hippocampus provides a shorter, less invasive route that avoids the need to drill through the skull.

The researchers prototype required the development of “a shape memory alloy needle, as in an alloy that can remember its an original shape and return to it when heated after being deformed, that can move along a curving path. The robot is also required to operate inside an MRI machine, which of course creates a strong magnetic field. Thus, the needle was made from nickel titanium, also referred to as nitinol, an alloy that has both shape memory and is non-magnetic, ensuring it won’t interfere with MRI machines. The 1.14 mm needle can be tracked every millimetre of the way by frequent MRI scans, the team at Vanderbilt claim it has an accuracy of better than 1.18 mm. This level of accuracy allows for faster, less invasive procedures to be performed on patients. According to Eric Barth the robot could be in operating theatres within the next decade.