Advanced surgical robotics has attracted significant research interest in supporting image guidance, even magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for effective navigation of surgical instruments. In situ effective guidance of access routes to the target anatomy, rendered based on imaging data, can enable a distinct awareness of the position of robotic instrument tip relative to the target anatomy in various types of minimally invasive interventions. Therefore, such MRI-guided robots will rely on real-time processing the co-registration of surgical plan with the imaging data captured during the intervention, as well as computing the relative configuration between the instrument and the anatomy of surgical interest.
This talk will present a compact robotic system capable to operate inside the bore of MRI scanner, as well as its solutions to technical challenges of providing a safe, effective catheter-based surgical manipulation. The proposed image processing system demonstrates its clinical potential of enhanced surgical safety by imposing visual feedback on tele-operated robotic instruments even under large-scale and rapid tissue deformations in soft tissue surgeries, such as cardiac electrophysiology and stereotactic neurosurgery. The ultimate research objective is to enable the operator to perform safe, precise and effective control of robotics instruments with the aid of pre- and intra-operative MRI models. The present work will be timely to bridge the current technical gap between MRI and surgical robotic control.
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Ka-Wai Kwok
Assistant Professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong
Dr. Ka-Wai Kwok has served as Assistant Professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), since 2014. Dr. Kwok obtained BEng and MPhil from Department of Automation and Computer-aided Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2003 and 2005, respectively. In 2007-2012, he pursued PhD study at Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, Department of Computing, Imperial College London in 2012, where he continued research on surgical robotics as a postdoctoral fellow. In 2013, Dr. Kwok was awarded the Croucher Foundation Fellowship, which supported his research jointly supervised by advisors in The University of Georgia, and Brigham and Women's Hospital - Harvard Medical School. His research interests focus on surgical robotics, intra-operative medical image processing, and their uses of high-performance computing techniques. He has involved in various designs of surgical robotic devices and interfaces for endoscopy, laparoscopy, stereotactic and intra-cardiac catheter interventions. To date, Dr. Kwok co-authored with >40 clinical fellows and >80 engineering scientists.
