A New Less Invasive Approach to Knee Surgery using a Vision-Guided Manipulator

We describe new methods for on-line image processing and calibration in the context of a vision-guided robotics system for orthopaedic knee surgery: During knee surgery, e.g. insertion of knee implants, bone material of the femur and the tibia has to be removed. Conventionally, surgeons use templates to guide a hand-held saw. Therefore accuracy is limited by the surgeon's skills and dexterity. The proposed system uses a saw mounted on a guiding device fixed on a manipulator's hand. During surgery the hand is guided to preoperatively planned cutting planes. Hence the surgeon freely moves the saw to remove bony material, only limited by the guiding device keeping the movement within the cutting plane. This approach combines the robot's high accuracy with the surgeon's expertise and is therefore expected to provide safety, high overall accuracy and lower complication rates.