Medical Robotics

Medical Robotics


In the surgical replacement of the knee joint, accurate alignment of prosthetic components with respect to the mechanical axis of the leg is essential to the mobility and longevity of the joint. The correct alignment is not obvious during surgery because the long bones are largely obscured by tissue. I participated in the development of an integrated system that allows the surgeon to accurately place implant components during total knee surgery. In the operating room, a robot and specially designed fixturing aid the surgeon in performing the bone resections as determined in the pre-operative plan. Crucial to the accuracy of this system is the rigid immobilization of the involved bones, the robot's ability to determine their exact locations in space and the accuracy of the robot itself. My responsibility in the project was, among other things, to improve the accuracy of the robot. Our project at that time was one of the very few in the world which explore the possibility of automating the surgical procedure in order to enhance the quality and precision of surgery.


A list of my papers on this topic:

Complete parameter identification of a robot using partial pose information.
A. Goswami, A. Quaid, and M. A. Peshkin
IEEE Control Systems (invited article), October 1993.
Total Knee Replacement
T. C. Kienzle III, S. D. Stulberg, M. A. Peshkin, A. Quaid, J. Lea, A. Goswami, and C-H Wu
IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology, May/June, 1995.
A Computer-assisted total knee replacement surgical system using a calibrated robot
Thomas C. Kienzle III, S. David Stulberg, Michael Peshkin, Arthur Quaid, Jon Lea, Ambarish Goswami, Chi-haur Wu
in Computer Assisted Surgery, edited by Russell H. Taylor, Stephane Lavallee, Grigore Burdea, and Ralph Moesges.
MIT Press, 1996
Achieving surgical accuracy with robots using parameter identification
A. Goswami, J. T. Lea, A. Quaid, M. A. Peshkin, T. C. Kienzle III, and S. D. Stulberg
First Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery (MRACS) Symposium, Pittsburgh, PA, 1994.
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