Engineers at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, US, have developed a robotic platform for brain surgery, using a needle able to follow a curved path through the cheek into the brain. This prototype is designed to treat severe epilepsy, surgery that currently is performed by drilling through the skull deep into the brain to destroy the small area where the seizures originate. The Vanderbilt researchers’ system radically reduce the risk associated with this procedure, as is much less invasive.
Today neuroscientists use needles through the cheek to implant electrodes in the brain, with the objective of monitoring brain activity to identify where seizures originate. These needles are straight, so they are no able to reach the seizures’ origin area; therefore, neuroscientists require drilling the skull to insert the needle through the top of the head.
For this reason, a team of Vanderbilt engineers decided to address epileptic seizures in a less invasive way. They decided to develop a robotic device that pokes through the cheek and enters the brain from underneath, as the area of the brain involved is the hippocampus, located at the bottom of the brain. In this way, drilling through the skull would not be necessary, as the robotic needle could reach much closer the targeted area.
To do so, it meant developing a shape-memory alloy needle that can be precisely steered along a curving path and a robotic platform that can operate inside the powerful magnetic field created by an MRI scanner.
The researchers were able to develop a working prototype, which was unveiled in a live demonstration this week at the Fluid Power Innovation and Research Conference in Nashville. It was presented by David Comber, the graduate student in mechanical engineering who did much of the design work.
The device is a 1.14 mm nickel-titanium needle that operates like a mechanical pencil. It has concentric tubes, some of which are curved, allowing the tip following a curved path into the brain. The scientists used nickel-titanium, because unlike many common metals it is compatible with MRIs. Using compressed air, a robotic platform controllably steers and advances the needle in tiny, millimeter steps. This allows the surgeon tracking its position by taking successive MRI scans.
The engineers have designed the system so that much of it can be made using 3-D printing in order to keep the price low. This was achieved by collaborating with Jonathon Slightam and Vito Gervasi at the Milwaukee School of Engineering who specialize in novel applications for additive manufacturing.
According to Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Eric Barth, who headed the project, the next stage in the surgical robot’s development is testing it with cadavers. He estimates it could be in operating rooms within the next decade.
Through: Agencia ID
