Tarbiat Modares University

TMU's researchers at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering managed to design and develop a haptic robot (with 6 degrees of freedom and workspace optimization) for use in Craniotomy Surgery.

Concerning the importance of using robotic systems in surgery, Hamid Reza Dehghani, the person in charge of the research project said: "robotic systems enjoy several advantages such as high precision, lower error and non-stop function, which make them suitable for surgery on bone tissues”.

"Cutting a piece of skull bone is an inevitable part of open surgery, which is very time consuming and boring," he said. Exercise of large forces with high precision consumes a large amount of energy from the surgeon, which makes it possible to increase the probable error of the surgery at a later stage when manipulating the sensitive brain tissue. Despite their significant role, the robotic systems with the ability to cut and cover the skull for neurosurgery are still at an experimental stage.

Describing his research project, Dr. Dehghani added: “In this study, based on the requirements for skull surgery, the surgeons' expectations of a robotic system were considered, and the design of a surgical robot on the skull was designed to reduce the workload of the surgeon." The designed robot has three degrees of active freedom to control the instrument and four degrees of inactive freedom to adjust the position and direction of the active part to the patient's skull.

TMU’ alumni added: “In the process of optimizing the active mechanism, a three-dimensional model of skull and fragments of bone obtained from various surgeries was developed.

It is worth mentioning that this research was carried out with the guidance of Dr. Majid Mohammadi Moghaddam, a faculty member of Mechanical Engineering Faculty.