PROJECT TITLE :

Hand-Held Bone Cutting Tool With Autonomous Penetration Detection for Spinal Surgery

ABSTRACT:

In spinal surgery, a surgeon usually desires to get rid of some elements of the spine to alleviate the pressure on the spinal cord or alternative nerves. During this procedure, the surgeon wants to chop and drill some holes in the spine. This operation is very risky as a result of there are some nerves beneath the target bones, and this procedure so needs a talented and experienced surgeon. But, if the cutting tool may detect penetration of the bone autonomously, the security of the procedure would be improved drastically. This study presents a hand-held bone cutting tool system that detects the penetration of the workpiece. The system learns the cutting states and motion states from demonstrations by a surgeon, and it autonomously detects the penetration of the workpiece and stops the actuation of the cutting tool immediately before total penetration. The proposed scheme for penetration detection does not require data of the shape and the position of the workpiece and, thus, it does not require any costly systems, such as robotic arms and position sensor systems. Also, the proposed theme will be simply applied to various shapes of the cutting tool, like drills and saws. The developed system was evaluated through experiments. The results showed that the performance of the developed system was satisfactory in each a motorized and a hand-held setup.