A Semi-Autonomous Stereotactic Brain Biopsy Robotic System With Enhanced Surgical Safety and Surgeon-Robot Collaboration

Objective: Despite benefits brought by recent neurosurgical robots, surgical safety and surgeon-robot collaboration remain significant challenges. In this article, we analyze and address these problems in the context of brain biopsy, by proposing a semi-autonomous system. Methods: A robotic module is designed for the automation of all the brain biopsy procedures, and a biopsy cannula with tissue blocker is developed to avoid tissue excess and haemorrhage. In addition, two methods are proposed for surgical safety and surgeon-robot collaboration enhancement. First, a priority-based control framework is proposed for neuronavigation with simultaneous optical tracking line-of-sight maintenance and surgeon avoidance. Second, after neuronavigation, an adaptive reconfiguration method is developed to optimize the arm angle of KUKA robot based on the surgeon's pose, for workspace interference minimization, high robot dexterity, and joint-limit avoidance. Result: Effectiveness of the proposed solution demonstrated by simulations and experiments. Conclusion: The system can perform automatic navigation with simultaneous optical tracking maintenance and surgeon avoidance, autonomous brain biopsy, and adaptive reconfiguration for workspace interference minimization. Significance: This work improves existing neurosurgical systems, in terms of autonomy level from mechanical guidance to task autonomy, surgical safety, and surgeon-robot collaboration.