Introducing haptic capabilities to a bone-mounted robot for intra-operative surface scanning

Abstract

Background Bone-mounted robots for orthopaedic surgery are small, cost-effective and could reduce invasiveness. Preoperative planning requires imaging (e.g. X-ray, CT, MRI) and a registration procedure, which introduces error. Accuracy might be improved by building an intraoperative anatomical model in the robot's own coordinate system, utilizing the rigid bone-robot connection. Methods Haptic capabilities were added to MBARS and user tests were conducted to help design the haptic control loop. The accuracy of a 3D physical scan was tested on a femur model. Results Indication for force scaling and mode switching was found. Average distance error of collected points from the surface scanned by the robot was 0.3 mm. Conclusions It is suggested that haptic control of bone-mounted robots should be non-linear and not necessarily transparent. Haptic surface acquisition can be used to generate an accurate intraoperative model of a joint surface. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.