학술논문

Vision-and-Force-Based Compliance Control for a Posterior Segment Ophthalmic Surgical Robot
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett. Robotics and Automation Letters, IEEE. 8(11):6875-6882 Nov, 2023
Subject
Robotics and Control Systems
Computing and Processing
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Surgery
Force
Robot sensing systems
Medical robotics
Admittance control
Microscopy
Jacobian matrices
Ophthalmic surgery robot
compliance control
image-based measurement
force feedback
Language
ISSN
2377-3766
2377-3774
Abstract
In ophthalmic surgery, particularly in procedures involving the posterior segment, clinicians face significant challenges in maintaining precise control of hand-held instruments without damaging the fundus tissue. Typical targets of this type of surgery are the internal limiting membrane (ILM) and the epiretinal membrane (ERM) which have an average thickness of only 60 $\mu \rm{m}$ and 2 $\mu \rm{m}$, respectively, making it challenging, even for experienced clinicians utilising dedicated ophthalmic surgical robots, to peel these delicate membranes successfully without damaging the healthy tissue. Minimal intra-operative motion errors when driving both hand-held and robotic-assisted surgical tools may result in significant stress on the delicate tissue of the fundus, potentially causing irreversible damage to the eye. To address these issues, this work proposes an intra-operative vision-and-force-based compliance control method for a posterior segment ophthalmic surgical robot. This method aims to achieve compliance control of the surgical instrument in contact with the tissue to minimise the risk of tissue damage. In this work we demonstrate that we can achieve a maximum motion error for the end effector (EE) of our ophthalmic robot of just 8 $\mu \rm{m}$, resulting in a 64$\%$ increase in motion accuracy compared to our previous work where the system was firstly introduced. The results of the proposed compliance control demonstrate consistent performance in the force range of 40 $\rm{mN}$ during membrane tearing.