Made by K.U.Leuven (1): The Vesalius Robot

Our university is not only a centre for the acquisition and exchange of knowledge; that knowledge is also concretised in products. One such product is the Vesalius Robot, a modular robot used for minimally invasive surgery. Professor Hendrik Van Brussel is the driving force behind the project, while the robot was invented by the Taiwanese Dr. Hsiao-Wei Tang. Dr. Thierry Janssens joined the project this year after completing his doctorate.

Name

Vesalius Robot, after the famous sixteenth-century anatomist from Leuven.

Characteristics

Van Brussel: “The Vesalius Robot helps surgeons during minimally invasive surgery or laparoscopic operations: such operations are conducted via small incisions and an inserted camera, which results in faster recovery, among other things. The robot can also provide haptic feedback, so the surgeon can really feel what he is doing in the patient’s body. The Vesalius Robot guides a laser beam to ablate tissue inside the body, for instance to remove endometriosis tissue. Using a pen, the surgeon draws the trajectory that is to be followed by the laser on a digitizing tablet so that ‘what you draw is what you cut’. ”

Professor Van Brussel demonstrates the Vesalius Robot. Behind him: Thierry Janssens and Hsiao-Wei Tang

Hsiao-Wei Tang: “For safety reasons, the robot only moves above the body. Not only the software, but also the hardware prevents the robot from wounding the patient. A special feature of the Vesalius Robot is that the ‘trocar’ point, where the laparoscopic tool enters the body, remains in a fixed place mechanically, so that no forces are exerted on the body. Finally, the robot is also modular. Its ‘arms’ are so narrow that they can be stacked next to each other in a limited space yet still allow extensive room to manoeuvre so there is no risk of collisions when several actions are executed simultaneously. Thus, in function of the operation, the surgeon can choose whether, for example, he wants one of the arms to open the wound while another holds the camera. The robot enables the surgeon to work more quickly and with greater attention to detail, which produces better results. The learning curve to be able to operate with the robot is also much smaller than learning to carry out this type of operation by hand.”

History

Van Brussel: “I have been researching robotics for more than thirty years. First, it was industrial and later it was service robotics such as mobile robots and wheelchairs. We have been building this robot for the past ten years because minimally invasive surgery developed quickly over this period. Hsiao-Wei’s doctorate in 2006 was certainly the first milestone. He started his research with a robot made by the German company Storz and used it to develop the result we have now. We received a lot of help from Professor Koninckx of the Gasthuisberg University Hospital, who is an authority in the field of manual laser laparoscopy.”

Hsiao-Wei Tang: “There has also been constant co-operation over the past ten years, for example with colleagues from ESAT for optical image processing, which provides the surgeon with 3D images. The next step is commercialisation. We are currently looking for investors, which is not an easy job because this is a market with which Flanders has no experience.”

“Nonetheless, we don’t call this a seed for the future for nothing. The Da Vinci Robot, an American surgical robot, has yielded enormous revenue in the ten years that it has been on the market. Even though there is only a small market for this type of robot, there are certainly commercial perspectives. The robot ensures that patients spend less time in the hospital because the operations are less invasive, more operations can be carried out per day and they require less staff. In light of an increasingly ageing population, these are all very important advantages. The Vesalius Robot also provides us with the possibility of keeping our healthcare in our own hands in the future, instead of becoming dependent on America or Asia for these sorts of robots.”

Derivative products

Janssens: “We have now also developed the Vesalius passive holder; a kind of surgeon’s third arm that can be used to manipulate and position a camera, for example. The price of this arm will be kept very low, so small hospitals can also invest in one. In time, we hope to be able to introduce the robot to hospitals via this passive holder.”

Van Brussel: “The system of haptic feedback is also used in the joysticks on intelligent wheelchairs, so that, for example, the wheelchair brakes automatically if it comes too close to an object.”

More robots

Van Brussel: “In the short term, we will also develop an eye surgery robot that can guide a thin needle through the cornea in order to work on the retina. This is a procedure that demands great precision because the contact forces are very small. Currently, there are very few surgeons who dare to carry out this type of operation manually.”

Tine Bergen