A Hybrid Steerable Robot with Magnetic Wrist for Minimally Invasive Epilepsy Surgery

Dexterity is demanded for an endoscopic tool to handle complicated procedures in neurosurgery, e.g., removing diseased tissue from inside the deep brain along a tortuous path. Current robotic tools are either rigid or lack wristed motion ability at the tip, leading to limited usage in minimally invasive procedures. In this paper, a hybrid steerable robot with a magnetic wristed forceps is proposed to provide enhanced dexterity for endoscopic epilepsy surgery. A set of three precurved Nitinol tubes with concentric deployment, called a concentric tube robot (CTR), serves as a 6 degrees-of-freedom (DoF) robotic positioner. The magnetic wristed forceps is composed of a rotational wrist joint, and forceps at the tip, both of which are actuated remotely by magnetic fields. The magnetic wrist and forceps provide an extra rotational DoF and a gripping DoF on top of the CTR, respectively. The magnetic wrist and gripper are designed to have a hollow channel along their common axis, inside which a soft tube is deployed as a second functional tool for irrigation or suction. An electromagnetic navigation system (eMNS) with 8 coils is used to create the quasi-static magnetic fields. Experimental characterization of the robot kinematics is performed and the results show the mean motion error of CTR is 2.8 mm. The workspace is also analyzed and results indicate that the proposed hybrid robot has a significantly larger reachable area compared to the one of the CTR alone. Mock epilepsy procedures are performed on a brain phantom to validate the feasibility of the hybrid robot for neurosurgery applications.