By attaching a millimeter-sized camera robot to a tether, scientists have designed a way to allow individuals with non-medical backgrounds to perform minimally invasive surgery in almost any location. Unlike room-size and expensive surgical robots, mini in vivo robots are inexpensive and mobile enough to support emergency surgeries almost anywhere, from the battlefield to outer space.
The University of Nebraska researchers hope that the inexpensive version of the da Vinci surgical robot system will make the advantages of robotic-assisted surgery more widely available, and open the doors for telesurgeries that were previously impossible. In a recent study, the team evaluated the ease of use and time required to perform simple abdominal surgeries with the in vivo camera robots. Their results are published in a recent issue of IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine.
“A new area of surgical robotics focuses on placing robots entirely inside the patient,” wrote Mark Rentschler et al. in their study. “In vivo robots are small, inexpensive, and easily transported, making it more likely that this technology can be more widely adopted. . . . The use of these robots can potentially reduce patient trauma in traditional medical centers, while the size of the robots makes them ideal for transportation to and use in remote or harsh environments.”