Initial Feasibility Study for Transurethral Kidney Surgery using a Tubular Continuum Manipulator
Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Computer- und Roboterassistierte Chirurgie e.V., pp. 81–86, 2016
Abstract
Transurethral access to the kidney is mostly utilized to perform endoscopy for diagnostics and stone removal.This minimally invasive procedure is challenging, especially for those patients whose kidney branches out intofine structures. Often, existing flexible instruments are lacking manipulability, robustness, and the field of viewis limited. In order to improve those aspects, we propose a new concept for transurethral kidney interventionsusing a tubular continuum manipulator composed of three tubes, each of which can be mechanically translatedand rotated, enabling the manipulator to follow nonlinear paths. To prove our concept, an optimization algo-rithm is presented, which utilizes multiobjective particle swarm optimization and optimizes tube parameters forsuccessively used sets of tubes for three specific patient kidney datasets. We further evaluate, whether sets oftubes can be determined to provide all three kidneys.