Engineering: Nanotech robot targets keyhole neurosurgery

 

While recent rapid advances in neurosurgery have allowed medical teams to target areas of the brain with minimal invasiveness, there has been a problem with the amount of visibility that keyhole surgery of this kind allows.

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The size of the openings left by probes, needles or catheters (used in keyhole procedures) are on a scale that can limit the surgeons’ manoeuvres.

Now, however, a miniature robot developed by a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem could offer a solution.

The tiny device works by guiding surgical procedures with an unprecedented level of accuracy and safety.
Traditional keyhole brain surgery, working from CT or MRI images, leaves the possibility of misplacement of surgical instruments which can result in a hemorrhage and severe complications.

Image-guided system uses accurate brain maps

The solution, offered by Professor Leo Joskowicz and PhD students Ruby Shamir and Moti Freiman of the School of Engineering and Computer Science at the Hebrew University, allows surgeons to work from an image-guided system which can automatically and accurately target structures of the brain mapped from preoperative scans of the patient’s head.

The two-year project, which has just won the Kaye Innovation Award, was funded by a grant from the Israel Ministry of Trade and Industry through Yissum, the technology transfer company of the Hebrew University.

The Kaye Innovation Awards have been presented annually since 1994 and were established by Isaac Kaye, a prominent UK industrialist in the pharmaceutical industry, to encourage innovative methods and inventions with good commercial potential.

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