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Head of Group

Prof Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena

B415C Bessemer Building

South Kensington Campus

 

About us

The MIM Lab develops robotic and mechatronics surgical systems for a variety of procedures.

Research lab info

What we do

The Mechatronics in Medicine Laboratory develops robotic and mechatronics surgical systems for a variety of procedures including neuro, cardiovascular, orthopaedic surgeries, and colonoscopies. Examples include bio-inspired catheters that can navigate along complex paths within the brain (such as EDEN2020), soft robots to explore endoluminal anatomies (such as the colon), and virtual reality solutions to support surgeons during knee replacement surgeries.

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  • Conference paper
    Bowyer SA, Rodriguez y Baena F, 2016,

    A Hybrid Constraint-Penalty Proxy Method for Six Degree-of-Freedom Haptic Display of Deforming Objects

    , 22nd ACM Conference on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST), Publisher: ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY, Pages: 173-182
  • Journal article
    Leibinger A, Forte AE, Tan Z, Oldfield MJ, Beyrau F, Dini D, Rodriguez Y Baena Fet al., 2015,

    Soft tissue phantoms for realistic needle insertion: a comparative study

    , Annals of Biomedical Engineering, Vol: 44, Pages: 2442-2452, ISSN: 1573-9686

    Phantoms are common substitutes for soft tissues in biomechanical research and are usually tuned to match tissue properties using standard testing protocols at small strains. However, the response due to complex tool-tissue interactions can differ depending on the phantom and no comprehensive comparative study has been published to date, which could aid researchers to select suitable materials. In this work, gelatin, a common phantom in literature, and a composite hydrogel developed at Imperial College, were matched for mechanical stiffness to porcine brain, and the interactions during needle insertions within them were analyzed. Specifically, we examined insertion forces for brain and the phantoms; we also measured displacements and strains within the phantoms via a laser-based image correlation technique in combination with fluorescent beads. It is shown that the insertion forces for gelatin and brain agree closely, but that the composite hydrogel better mimics the viscous nature of soft tissue. Both materials match different characteristics of brain, but neither of them is a perfect substitute. Thus, when selecting a phantom material, both the soft tissue properties and the complex tool-tissue interactions arising during tissue manipulation should be taken into consideration. These conclusions are presented in tabular form to aid future selection.

  • Journal article
    Bowyer SA, Rodriguez y Baena F, 2015,

    Dissipative control for physical human-robot interaction

    , IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Vol: 31, Pages: 1281-1293, ISSN: 1552-3098

    Physical human-robot interaction is fundamental to exploiting the capabilities of robots in tasks and environments where robots have limited cognition or comprehension and is virtually ubiquitous for robotic manipulation in highly unstructured environments, as are found in surgery. A critical aspect of physical human-robot interaction in these cases is controlling the robot so that the individual human and robot competencies are maximized, while guaranteeing user, task, and environment safety. Dissipative control precludes dangerous forcing of a shared tool by the robot, ensuring safety; however, it typically suffers from poor control fidelity, resulting in reduced task accuracy. In this study, a novel, rigorously formalized, n-dimensional dissipative control strategy is proposed that employs a new technique called “energy redirection” to generate control forces with increased fidelity while remaining dissipative and safe. Experimental validation of the method, for complete pose control, shows that it achieves a 90% reduction in task error compared with the current state of the art in dissipative control for the tested applications. The findings clearly demonstrate that the method significantly increases the fidelity and efficacy of dissipative control during physical human-robot interaction. This advancement expands the number of tasks and environments into which safe physical human-robot interaction can be employed effectively.

  • Conference paper
    Burrows C, Liu F, Rodriguez y Baena F, 2015,

    Smooth on-line path planning for needle steering with non-linear constraints

    , IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Publisher: IEEE, Pages: 2653-2658, ISSN: 2153-0858

    Percutaneous intervention is a commonly used surgicalprocedure for many diagnostic and therapeutic operations.Target motion in soft tissue during an intervention caused bytissue deformation is a common problem, along with needledisplacement. In this work, we present a deformation plannerthat generates continuous curvature paths with a boundedcurvature derivative that can be used on-line to reach a movingtarget. This planner is computationally inexpensive and can beused for any robotic system, which has finite angular velocity,to reach a mobile target. The deformation planner, is integratedinto a needle steering system using a novel, biologically inspiredneedle, STING, to track a simulated moving target. In-vitroresults in gelatin demonstrate accurate 2D tracking of a movingtarget (mean 0.27 mm end positional error and 0.80◦approachangle error) over 3 target movement rates.

  • Journal article
    Oldfield MJ, Leibinger A, Seah TE, Rodriguez Y Baena Fet al., 2015,

    Method to Reduce Target Motion Through Needle-Tissue Interactions.

    , Annals of Biomedical Engineering, Vol: 43, Pages: 2794-2803, ISSN: 1573-9686

    During minimally invasive surgical procedures, it is often important to deliver needles to particular tissue volumes. Needles, when interacting with a substrate, cause deformation and target motion. To reduce reliance on compensatory intra-operative imaging, a needle design and novel delivery mechanism is proposed. Three-dimensional finite element simulations of a multi-segment needle inserted into a pre-existing crack are presented. The motion profiles of the needle segments are varied to identify methods that reduce target motion. Experiments are then performed by inserting a needle into a gelatine tissue phantom and measuring the internal target motion using digital image correlation. Simulations indicate that target motion is reduced when needle segments are stroked cyclically and utilise a small amount of retraction instead of being held stationary. Results are confirmed experimentally by statistically significant target motion reductions of more than 8% during cyclic strokes and 29% when also incorporating retraction, with the same net insertion speed. By using a multi-segment needle and taking advantage of frictional interactions on the needle surface, it is demonstrated that target motion ahead of an advancing needle can be substantially reduced.

  • Journal article
    Beretta E, De Momi E, Rodriguez y Baena F, Ferrigno Get al., 2015,

    Adaptive hands-on control for reaching and targeting tasks in surgery

    , International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems, Vol: 12, ISSN: 1729-8814

    Cooperatively controlled robotic assistants can be used in surgery for the repetitive execution of targeting/reaching tasks, which require smooth motions and accurate placement of a tool inside a working area. A variable damping controller, based on a priori knowledge of the location of the surgical site, is proposed to enhance the physical human-robot interaction experience. The performance of this and of typical constant damping controllers is comparatively assessed using a redundant light-weight robot. Results show that it combines the positive features of both null (acceleration capabilities > 0.8m/s2) and optimal (mean pointing error < 1.5mm) constant damping controllers, coupled with smooth and intuitive convergence to the target (direction changes reduced by 30%), which ensures that assisted tool trajectories feel natural to the user. An application scenario is proposed for brain cortex stimulation procedures, where the surgeon’s intentions of motion are explicitly defined intra-operatively through an image-guided navigational system.

  • Journal article
    Secoli R, Robinson M, Brugnoli M, Rodriguez y Baena Fet al., 2015,

    A low-cost, high-field-strength magnetic resonance imaging-compatible actuator

    , PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTION OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS PART H-JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE, Vol: 229, Pages: 215-224, ISSN: 0954-4119
  • Conference paper
    Liu F, Petersen J, Rodriguez y Baena F, 2015,

    Parallel Moduli Space Sampling: Robust and Fast Surgery Planning for Image Guided Steerable Needles

    , IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO), Publisher: IEEE, Pages: 626-631
  • Conference paper
    Leibinger A, Burrows C, Oldfield MJ, Rodriguez y Baena Fet al., 2015,

    Tissue Motion Due to Needle Deflection

    , 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE-Engineering-in-Medicine-and-Biology-Society (EMBC), Publisher: IEEE, Pages: 1873-1876, ISSN: 1557-170X
  • Conference paper
    Bowyer SA, Rodriguez y Baena F, 2014,

    Dynamic frictional constraints in translation and rotation

    , IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Publisher: IEEE, Pages: 2685-2692, ISSN: 1050-4729

    Active constraints and virtual fixtures are popular control strategies used within human-robot collaborative manipulation tasks, particularly in the field of robot-assisted surgery. Recent research has shown how active constraints, which robotically regulate the motion of a tool that is primarily manipulated by a human, can be implemented in dynamic environments which change and deform throughout a procedure. In a dynamic environment, movement of the constraint boundary can cause active forcing of the surgical tools, potentially reducing the surgeon's control and jeopardising patient safety. Dynamic frictional constraints have been proposed as a method for enforcing dynamic active constraints which do not generate energy of their own, and simply dissipate or redirect the energy of the surgeon to provide assistance. In this paper, dynamic frictional constraints are reformulated to allow formal proof that they are indeed dissipative, and hence also passive. This new formulation is then extended such that dynamic frictional constraints can simultaneously constrain the position and orientation of a tool. Experimental results show that the method is of significant benefit in performing a dynamic task when compared to cases without any assistance; with position and orientation constraints individually and with a conventional frictional constraint without energy redirection.

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