Toward a Meso-Scale SMA-Actuated MRI-Compatible Neurosurgical Robot

Brain tumors are the most feared complications of cancer. Their treatment is challenging because of the lack of good imaging modality and the inability to remove the complete tumor. Facilitating tumor removal by accessing regions outside the "line of sight" will require a highly dexterous...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on robotics 2012-02, Vol.28 (1), p.213-222
Main Authors: Mingyen Ho, McMillan, A. B., Simard, J. M., Gullapalli, R., Desai, J. P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actuators
Applied sciences
Biological and medical sciences
Computer science
control theory
systems
Control theory. Systems
Exact sciences and technology
General equipment and techniques
Instruments, apparatus, components and techniques common to several branches of physics and astronomy
Joints
Mathematical model
Medical sciences
Meso-scale robot
Motion control
MRI-compatible robot
Neurosurgery
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Physics
Robotics
Robots
shape memory alloy
Strain
Surgery (general aspects). Transplantations, organ and tissue grafts. Graft diseases
Temperature control
Transducers
Wires
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Summary:Brain tumors are the most feared complications of cancer. Their treatment is challenging because of the lack of good imaging modality and the inability to remove the complete tumor. Facilitating tumor removal by accessing regions outside the "line of sight" will require a highly dexterous and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-compatible robot. We present our work toward the development of an MRI-compatible neurosurgical robot. We used two antagonistic shape memory alloy (SMA) wires as actuators for each joint. Because of the size limitation of the device, we rely on temperature feedback to control the joint motion of the robot. We have developed a theoretical model based on Tanaka's model to characterize the joint motion with the change in SMA wire temperature. The results demonstrated that the SMA wire temperature can be used reliably to predict the motion of the robot. We then used a pulse-width modulation (PWM) scheme and switching circuit to control the temperature of multiple SMA wires. Experimental results showed that we can actuate the robot reliably and observe joint motion in a gelatin medium. Magnetic resonance (MR) images also showed that the robot is fully MRI-compatible and creates no significant image distortion.
ISSN:1552-3098
1941-0468
DOI:10.1109/TRO.2011.2165371