Temperature estimation for robotic bone milling surgery based on heat generation and conduction

Bone milling is a commonly required operation in many surgical procedures, but the processing heat may cause thermal damage to the bone and other tissues, especially in robot-assisted surgery. In this paper, we develop a mathematical model for the heat source of the bone milling process and the heat conduction inside the bone to solve the three-dimensional temperature distribution at any time. Milling experiments based on animal bones were carried out, using three milling depths and four feed speeds. In the experiments, 16 thermocouples distributed on the upper and lower surfaces of the bone were used to detect temperature changes. The proposed model was trained and validated with these experimental data, and the results showed a good agreement between the estimated and experimental temperatures (SEE=3.072). The established model can be expected to guide the planning and control the bone milling operations.