DEVELOPMENT OF IMPROVED SURGICAL TOOL FOR MINIMALLY INVASIVE SURGERY

SBMT in collaboration with IISC and BEST has taken up a project for development of improved surgical tool for minimally invasive surgery. The existing tools have typically two or three degrees of freedom and hence limit the mobility of the surgeon. The tools are also not equipped with sensors that can provide the often required feed back of temperature and pressure near the operating region. The visual feedback, obtained from a camera, is also inadequate since there is no stereoscopic vision available. The project is to develop improved laparoscopic tools that are more similar to a human arm with a wrist joint and add sensors that can measure pressure and temperature at the operating/clamping point of the tool. Work also includes to develop models of a few biological tissues and use the models to predict temperature and pressure at a region around the point of measurement and to develop a graphical display where all the sensed and estimate measurements can be presented to the surgeon in an easily perceptible manner and to explore the possibility of providing stereoscopic vision to the surgeon.