Robotic surgery

Proiektuaren deskribapena

"One of the most important branches of engineering in the medical sector is the development of technologies that are able to treat patients in a non-invasive and secure way. As an example, within the branch of surgery, a clear trend towards minimal invasive procedures can be nowadays observed. This way, endoscopic surgeries are nowadays performed and more and more surgical procedures are migrating from open surgery approaches towards endoscopic approaches.

An step forward in the assurance of fully safe and controlled surgery procedures is the assistance of the surgeon by means of supporting technologies. A clear example is the application of robots that assist surgeons in many different ways in the surgery theatre.

Besides the application of robotic surgery, another branch of technologies that has improved the security of surgical procedures drastically is the possibility of guiding surgical procedures based on images taken before or during the operation. The possibility for the surgeon to have real time images or maps of the human body allows them to take safer decisions.

If the images are at the same time combined with the possibility of generating very well controlled movements thanks to the use of supporting devices such as robots, the surgery becomes a much safer procedure where the surgeon can have an almost total control of the steps in the procedure.

The PBL proposed at the current semester tries to emulate the combination of these two technologies: the use of image technologies to reconstruct internal areas of the human body as well as the capacity of robots to generate very well controlled movements.

This way, the challenge in the PBL relies in the reconstruction of internal structures by means of ultrasound technologies as well as the selection and manipulation of appropriate geometries based on previous identification. The students will develop strategies in order to perform the entire process, identification and manipulation, in a fully automatic way taking advantage of the robot available for the PBL.

Previous to the final definition of the solution, each working group will have to make a conceptual design of the entire equipment proposing different alternatives. For this purpose, interviews with professionals working in the application areas will try to be carried out during the PBL."

Parte hartzaileak:

Isasmend Echevarria, Maider,
Arregi Barba, Maddi
Wester, Nathalie
Muguruza Hernandez, Amaia
Valdivielso Dorronsoro, Irati
Arzalluz Aranaga, Maite