Robotic Surgical Planning Around Soft Tissue Attachment Points
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional computer-assisted surgical systems often fail to consider soft tissue, such as ligaments, during joint reconstruction procedures like total knee arthroplasty, leading to iatrogenic soft tissue damage and implant complications.
Innovation Solution
A surgical system that includes a robotic device, a surgical tool, and a processing circuit to generate a virtual bone model, identify soft tissue attachment points, plan implant placement, and control the robotic device to avoid these points, using a graphical user interface to visualize and constrain the surgical tool.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional computer-assisted surgical systems are used for joint reconstruction, then the surgical procedure can be performed with standard planning, but soft tissue damage and implant impingement occur due to lack of soft tissue consideration
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary identification of soft tissue attachment points and generation of virtual bone models with soft tissue representations before the actual surgical procedure. This allows the surgical plan to be pre-adjusted to avoid soft tissue damage and implant impingement, resolving the contradiction by preparing protective measures in advance rather than reacting to soft tissue issues during surgery.
Solution Approach 2:
The system introduces virtual bone models and soft tissue attachment point identifiers as intermediary representations between the physical anatomy and the surgical planning process. These virtual models serve as mediators that allow the surgeon to visualize and plan implant placement while avoiding soft tissue structures, thereby preventing harm without requiring direct manipulation of the soft tissue during planning.
2Productivity
If implant placement is planned without soft tissue attachment points, then the planning process is simpler and faster, but iatrogenic soft tissue damage and weakening of attachment points occur
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates virtual copies of the bone anatomy with embedded soft tissue attachment point data and soft tissue representations. These virtual copies allow the surgical planning software to automatically identify and protect soft tissue structures during implant placement planning, enabling efficient automated planning that incorporates soft tissue consideration without requiring manual soft tissue mapping for each planning scenario.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the planning parameters from traditional bone-only focus to include soft tissue attachment point coordinates, soft tissue volume representations, and ligament line-of-action data. By expanding the planning parameter set to include soft tissue information, the system enables automated planning algorithms to naturally accommodate soft tissue protection while maintaining planning efficiency through computational rather than manual processes.
3Ease of operation
If the surgical tool is not confined to a control object, then the surgeon has greater freedom of movement, but precision and control over the surgical tool path are reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The control object is designed as a dynamic, adaptive constraint that responds to the surgical tool's position and orientation in real-time. The control object boundaries are calculated based on the virtual bone model and soft tissue attachment points, automatically adjusting to maintain optimal clearance from soft tissue structures while allowing necessary surgical freedom. This dynamic adaptation resolves the contradiction by providing precision constraints that move with the surgical tool rather than rigid fixed boundaries.
Data Source
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AI summary
A surgical system includes a robotic device, a surgical tool mounted on the robotic device, and a processing circuit. The processing circuit is configured to receive image data of an anatomy, generate a virtual bone model based on the image data, identify a soft tissue attachment point on the virtual bone model, plan placement of an implant based on the soft tissue attachment point, generate a control object based on the placement of the implant, and control the robotic device to confine the surgical tool within the control object.