Development of a surgical drill endeffector for a 7-DoF surgical arm | |
In the field of spinal surgery, particularly in tasks related to bone drilling and screw placement, precision and accuracy are key for ensuring patient safety and optimal outcomes. The inherent complexities and risk nature of spinal procedures highlights the need for enhanced precision that can enhance the skills of surgeons and support them in the decision process during critical procedures. Robotic surgery has the potential to offer a reliable and precise system for orthopedic surgeries, capable of providing time feedback of the task in hand that can be used by the surgeons for the intraoperative decision-making process of the surgery. This master thesis aims to contribute to the advancement of robotic surgery by focusing on the development and integration of a robotic drill end-effector designed for spinal procedures. The master thesis is a collaboration between the OR-X of the University Hospital Balgrist, and the BIROMED-Lab of the University of Basel. |
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Development of a ROS2-based middleware hardware interface for the OR-X | |
The OR-X is a new cutting-edge research facility in the Balgrist Clinic Infrastructure. It is a cadaveric operating theatre and training lab with properties almost identical to a surgical operating room that enables students and researchers to train or work without burden on the patient. Researchers must interact with devices for experiments to process, analyze, and control real-time data. Due to the nature of medical devices and data, this is a demanding task regarding computing resources and network bandwidth. To address this challenge, the OR-X is equipped with several interfaces (USB, Ethernet, HDMI, etc.) that accommodate various device types and are linked through an optical fiber to a powerful computing instance. This project aims to develop middleware for the OR-X infrastructure. This software will allow researchers to parametrize the entire OR for their experiment. They should be able to connect to any devices and sensors within the OR-X, interface them with custom frameworks, or control the data stream for visualization and recordings. Due to the high diversity of devices that need to be accommodated, this software will present numerous challenges in terms of compatibility and scalability. Additionally, the software should be designed to be easily maintainable, extendable with new devices, and accessible for the users. We selected ROS2 as the main framework of this system, as it is open-source, scalable, and designed to facilitate manipulations of data flux between systems. |
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