Actively Compliant Parallel End-Effector Mechanism for Medical Interventions

Robot-assisted surgery and envisioned diagnostics require the clinician to rely almost solely on visual feedback, pointing to the need for solutions to ensure that contact forces with the anatomy are maintained at clinically safe and effective levels at all times. A 6 degree-of-freedom (DOF) Active Compliance End-effector (ACE) is proposed that is capable of counter-movements in real-time to automatically regulate contact forces in the presence of both patient body-surface movements and motion of the clinical device. The focus in Phase II will be on ACE for robot-assisted ultrasonic imaging to enable rapid and effective triage of trauma victims at forward medical facilities or in mass casualty scenarios, where trained sonographers are not available in adequate numbers. Infoscitex has assembled a distinguished team of clinical, academic and industrial experts to undertake this development. After preliminary experiments to establish force and motion requirements, a prototype 6 DOF ACE will be integrated with an ultrasound transducer, a motion control device and, later, a serial link arm, in order to conduct representative tests with phantoms and fresh animal cadavers. Test will demonstrate active compliance/force regulation, the capacity to detect blood in the peritoneum, and preliminary indications of the benefits of ACE-based, robot-assisted ultrasound imaging.