title: Construction and verification of a safety region for brain tumor removal with a telesurgical robot system.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The authors propose and verify a method for the construction of a safety region for minimally invasive brain tumor removal. The safety region is constructed to avoid damaging normal tissues through the movement of a robotic instrument during brain tumor surgery using a telesurgical robotic system and a small port.
  
  
  METHODS
  3 D boundaries of a tumor and a port were generated as a critical wall to avoid invading normal tissues through an image processing algorithm with consideration of a safe margin. Then, fast collision detection between the boundary and the robotic instrument was continuously performed to monitor the movement of the robotic instrument.
  
  
  RESULTS
  An experiment was conducted using the prototype of a telesurgical robot system and a hemispherical phantom. A 3 D boundary was generated from the CT images of the phantom with a safe margin of 2.76 mm. The robotic instrument did not penetrate the boundary.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The experimental result shows that our method can contribute toward safe brain tumor removal with robotic surgery.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hanyang University , Seoul , Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Jongseong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jang
authors.forename: Hyung Wook
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Young Soo
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Kim
mesh_terms: D001932:Brain Neoplasms / Q000601:surgery*; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation*; D019060:Minimally Invasive Surgical Procedures / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012371:Robotics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013238:Stereotaxic Techniques; D025321:Surgery, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation*; D014584:User-Computer Interface
keywords: Minimally invasive brain surgery; collision detection; safety region; telesurgery