ADVANCING THE STANDARDS OF OPHTHALMIC TREATMENT THROUGH ROBOTICS
At present, over 60 million people around the world suffer from treatable visual impairment, and could benefit from from eye surgery procedures. There is a worldwide shortage of qualified surgeons to meet this need. Through the development of robotic-assisted eye surgery, the potential exists to treat many of those who otherwise would not have access to surgery.
Dr Yan Jin (Reader, Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing, Queen’s University), and Prof Johnny Moore (Medical Director, Cathedral Eye Clinic) are collaborating to advance the standards of ophthalmic treatment through robotics.
Advantages of Robot-Assisted Eye Surgery
Robot-assisted surgery can apply master-slave control method, enabling telesurgery, in which the surgeon can operate the surgery a distance away from the patient. Telesurgery is rather meaningful for remote places, or hazardous areas. Robot assistance has the potential to save operation time, and cost of eye surgery.
Robotic surgical systems can train novice surgeons, in a virtual, realistic technological environment. The high-quality stereo visualisation provides the trainee with correspondence with manipulators, connecting the movement of the human hand and the tool tip movement inside the patient, and feeding back a virtual sensation to the trainee. In addition, there can be a second surgeon’s console, where the expert surgeon can also control the surgical tool to teach and correct the trainee.
Compared with manual eye surgery, robot-assisted eye surgery can filter a surgeon’s hand tremor and provide higher positioning precision.
The robot can limit the surgeons tool motion in a specific range, and filter human mistake manipulations.
