Wednesday 4 September 2013

A Wireless Robot for Networked Laparoscopy


State-of-the-art laparoscopes for minimally invasive abdominal surgery are encumbered by cabling for power, video,and light sources. Although these laparoscopes provide good image quality, they interfere with surgical instruments, occupy a trocar port, require an assistant in the operating room to control the scope,
have a very limited field of view, and are expensive. MARVEL is a wireless Miniature Anchored Robotic Videoscope for Expedited Laparoscopy that addresses these limitations by providing an inexpensive
in vivo wireless camera module (CM) that eliminates the surgical-tool bottleneck experienced by surgeons in current laparoscopic endoscopic single-site (LESS) procedures. The MARVEL system includes 1) multipleCMsthat feature a wirelessly controlled pan/tilt camera platform, which enable a full hemisphere field of view inside the abdominal cavity, wirelessly adjustable focus, and a multiwavelength illumination control system; 2) amaster control module that provides a near-zero latency video wireless communications link, independent wireless control for multiple MARVEL CMs, digital zoom; and 3) awireless human–machine interface that gives the surgeon full control over CM functionality. The research reported in this paper is the first step in developing a suite of semiautonomous wirelessly controlled and networked robotic cyberphysical devices to enable a paradigm shift in minimally invasive surgery and other domains such as wireless body area networks.

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