Medical Devices

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Inventors at Vanderbilt University have developed a robotic platform capable of guaranteeing a degree of agility, mechanical stability, power, reliability, comparable to a standard robotic platform for laparoscopic surgery, but characterized by a much lower invasiveness.

Vanderbilt engineers have designed and built a device that improves the accuracy of image-guidance systems (IGS) during surgery. The device creates a custom,  non-slip fit over the head and provides a rigid platform for attaching optical tracking markers to the patient, which is a critical component of image-guided neurosurgical procedures. The device can be used to improve the accuracy of IGS in other areas of the anatomy as well.

The A.R.M.A. Laboratory of Vanderbilt University has developed a novel continuum robot design enabling multi-scale motion at the macro and micro scale. The unique design allows miniaturization with minimal added cost thereby potentially giving rise to a new generation of surgical robots capable of both macro-motion for surgical intervention and micro-scale motion for cellular-level imaging or intervention. Micro-motion is achieved through a unique method for altering the equilibrium pose of the robot via material re-distribution throughout the length of the robot. This process ushers in a new class of surgical robotics termed continuum robots with equilibrium modulation (CREM).

A team of Vanderbilt researchers has developed a novel fiducial marker for use during radiosurgery of the eye. The fiducial is a non-invasive, comfortable method for performing registration of preoperative medical images and the radiotherapy target during therapy. The device aims to remove the need for existing invasive registration procedures, while still providing accurate localization to the clinician.