Stereotactic Surgical Drill with Skull-Mounted Arms
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current surgical drills for accessing body cavities, such as the skull, are cumbersome, time-intensive, and prone to errors due to lack of direct fixation to the patient's head, leading to inaccuracies and increased setup time in stereotactic procedures.
Innovation Solution
A surgical drill with a main body and mounting feature for a drill bit, incorporating a channel for navigation devices to ensure precise stereotactic tracking, and a stereotactic access device with mounting arms for stable fixation to the patient's body, allowing for accurate and efficient access along a predetermined trajectory.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If a frame is mounted to the patient's skull for fixation in stereotactic procedures, then high accuracy (1-2 mm) for reaching target structures is achieved, but the frame is cumbersome, uncomfortable for patients, and time intensive
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the essential function of skull fixation from the complex Leksell frame system, retaining only the critical mounting arms and positioning elements needed for accurate drill guidance, while eliminating the cumbersome full-frame structure
Solution Approach 2:
The stereotactic system is segmented into separate functional components: mounting arms for skull fixation, drill holder for tool positioning, and navigation integration, allowing each component to be optimized independently and reducing overall system complexity
2Loss of time
If frameless stereotactic procedures use accessories not directly attached to the patient's head, then setup time is reduced, but any movement of the drill is not directly accompanied by corresponding movement of the head, reducing accuracy
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the drill holder with the mounting arms that are directly attached to the patient's skull, ensuring that the drill and navigation system move together as a single integrated unit, thereby maintaining accurate spatial correspondence between the drill trajectory and the patient's head position
Solution Approach 2:
The mounting arms serve as an intermediary mechanism that directly connects the drill holder to the patient's skull, providing a stable reference frame that ensures accurate tracking of drill movement relative to the patient's head throughout the procedure
3Ease of manufacture
If skin fiducials are used for registration in frameless stereotaxy, then setup is simplified, but skin fiducials are movable in relation to the underlying skull, introducing additional error
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of attaching fiducials to the skin surface, the patent inverts the approach by directly attaching mounting arms with integrated fiducial markers to the skull itself, ensuring that the reference points remain fixed relative to the bone rather than moving with skin deformation
4Reliability
If a surgical drill is designed to be disposable and sterilizable, then infection risk is reduced, but the drill may require more resources and minimal assembly for use
Solution Approach 1:
The surgical drill is designed with pre-assembled integrated components including the mounting arms, drill holder, and navigation interface, all sterilizable as a single unit, eliminating the need for complex assembly in the operating room and reducing the risk of contamination during assembly
Data Source
AI summary
This invention is directed to devices and methods for surgical access to the body, and particularly to surgical drills for accessing a body cavity and methods therefor. In general, a surgical drill is utilized to gain access to a body cavity or part, such as where bone and/or other hard tissues need to be pierced. For example, the skull and other bones with internal cavities may require surgical access to treat body portions contained within the bone. Further in general, it may be generally desirable to create access holes or openings which may be as small as possible and at a particular direction and/or trajectory. In this manner the access hole or opening may be utilized to guide another device, such as a treatment device, to a particular target along the established trajectory of the access hole or opening.