Robot-Assisted Decompressive Laminectomy Planning Based on 3D Medical Image

The decompressive laminectomy is a common treatment for lumbar spinal stenosis. Generally, surgeons use grinding tools to remove laminae under the guidance of intraoperative medical images. To improve accuracy and reduce surgeons' burdens, robot-assisted surgery is gaining acceptance. This paper proposes a method to plan grinding paths and velocities based on 3-D medical images in the context of robot-assisted decompressive laminectomies. As the lesion areas to be grinded are irregular, an interactive method with 3-D reconstruction is designed for surgeons to transfer discrete information about grinding paths and velocities to the robot system. The path generation strategy is based on a ray casting algorithm after space registrations, while the velocity generation strategy is based on the virtual force and mechanical analysis is used to optimize temporal efficiency and stability. A complete system is developed to test and explore the feasibility of this method. Results suggest that robot-assisted decompressive laminectomies can be performed well.