Development of a Robot-Assisted Surgery System for Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgery

Medical robots have been developed rapidly in recent years. Clinical application of da Vinci system showed its advantages. Currently, there is no specialized robot system for cranio-maxillofcial surgery. We developed a cranio-maxillofacial surgical robot system focusing on the reconstruction of mandibular defects. With the funding of the Chinese National High Technology Research and Development Program (863 Program), we developed a computer-aided design (CAD) system for four typical operations: reconstruction of mandibular defects, orbit reconstruction, skull base tumor resection, and orthognathic surgery, a navigation system and a robot with three arms for mandibular reconstruction. In the CAD system, the operation pattern was designed based on surgeons’ habits and experiences. The software system was easy to be used with many functions for designing different surgical procedures. In surgical navigation system for guiding the robot, the hardware of the navigation system was assembled, and the software system of real-time registration was realized. The robot was designed and assembled. It had three arms and was able to finish the bone graft placement precisely and automatically under the navigation guidance according to the preoperative design. The whole system was assessed by model and animal experiment with good results.