Autonomous Suturing Framework and Quantification Using a Cable-Driven Surgical Robot

Suturing is required in almost all surgeries but it is challenging to perform with surgical robots due to limited vision and/or haptic feedback. To tackle this problem, we present an autonomous suturing framework that encompasses a novel needle path planner, as well as an accurate needle pose estima...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on robotics 2021-04, Vol.37 (2), p.404-417
Main Authors: Pedram, Sahba Aghajani, Shin, Changyeob, Ferguson, Peter Walker, Ma, Ji, Dutson, Erik P., Rosen, Jacob
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Autonomous surgical robotics
Bionics
Controllers
intelligent robotic surgery
Mechanical properties
Medical robotics
Needles
Orientation
Parameters
Path planning
Raven surgical robot
Robot kinematics
Robot sensing systems
robot-assisted surgery
Robots
Surgery
Sutures
suturing automation
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Summary:Suturing is required in almost all surgeries but it is challenging to perform with surgical robots due to limited vision and/or haptic feedback. To tackle this problem, we present an autonomous suturing framework that encompasses a novel needle path planner, as well as an accurate needle pose estimator and a six degrees-of-freedom controller. A novel needle grasper is developed that enables needle pose estimation both inside and outside the tissue. The framework was evaluated experimentally using the Raven IV surgical system and important suture parameters were quantified. The experiment results confirmed a needle pose estimation accuracy of < 0.87 mm in position and < 3.46^\circ in orientation across all directions. Moreover, the results revealed that using the proposed framework enabled following the reference needle trajectories with errors of 2.07 mm in position and 4.29^\circ in orientation. These are drastic improvements of more than 10× in position and 5× in orientation compared to the Raven IV kinematic controller. Additionally, the results verified that our framework delivered the desired clinical suture parameters successfully across tissue phantom environments with different mechanical properties and under various needle trajectories. A supplementary video can be found at: http://bionics.seas.ucla.edu/research/surgeryproject18.htmlhttp://bionics.seas.ucla.edu/research/surgeryproject18
ISSN:1552-3098
1941-0468
DOI:10.1109/TRO.2020.3031236