Design of a novel 6-DoF robotic system for pituitary tumor removal under MRI guidance

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provide superior visuals that might be suitable for complicated surgical procedures in complex parts of the human body like brain and heart. Brain tumor removal is one of the trickiest surgical procedures and the pituitary tumor is one of the most common type of intracranial tumors. In this paper, we present an MRI compatible robotic system for pituitary tumor removal via trans-nasal access to the surgical site. The robotic system is designed to operate in a Siemens (R) 3T MRI scanner. A 5mm diameter and 6-DOF design specific manipulator is developed to access the pituitary glands and remove the tumor using the commercially available tools. The actuation system is designed to fit inside the MRI bore and operate just above the nasal entry point. The manipulator is designed to work in a 20x20mm workspace of the pituitary gland and this workspace is validated by experiments. The presented robotic system is expected to decrease the complexity by accessing the surgical site through the nasal cavity and improve the quality of tumor removal by providing better image quality under MRI guidance.