What are the components of orthopedic surgical robots？

 Orthopaedic surgical robot is a kind of surgical robot, mainly used to assist orthopaedic surgery, and its core functions include customized three-dimensional preoperative program, improve the clarity of the image of the surgical site, reduce tremor and improve surgical precision, reduce damage to healthy bones and tissues, reduce blood loss, protect the nerves, shorten hospital stay and speed up recovery.

The composition of an orthopedic surgical robot can be broadly divided into a control system, a positioning and navigation device, a robotic arm device, and a supporting tool set, which are introduced one by one below.

(1) Control system

This is the core system of the robot. In addition to the integration of various components, the algorithms involved in the image processing software module, the surgical planning software module, and the robotic arm control module are the core secrets independently researched and developed by each robotics company. The accuracy of image processing, as well as the rationality of surgical planning and the efficiency of human-computer interaction can increase the operator’s acceptance of the robot, and the algorithms of the control module are closely related to the surgeon’s operating feel. This is a system that is difficult to evaluate quantitatively and can only be verified through clinical applications.

(2) Localization and navigation system.

The system forms a three-dimensional model based on the preoperative guided image, unifies the three-dimensional model with the actual position of the patient and the real-time position of the surgical instruments in space under one coordinate system, and utilizes a three-dimensional positioning system to collect and display the position of the surgical instruments in space in real time, so that the surgeon can conduct navigational surgical treatment on the patient by observing the relative positional relationship between the surgical instruments and lesion sites in the three-dimensional model. It mainly includes imaging module, tracking module and display module. Accuracy is the key index of navigation equipment, and the key technology points are stereo positioning system, spatial alignment technology, and multimode image fusion. Among them, spatial alignment technology and multimode image fusion are realized by software algorithms, while in terms of stereo positioning system, currently used for surgical navigation is mainly optical positioning, there are also some instruments in the study of magnetic navigation technology, while the robotic arm often adopts mechanical positioning.

What are the components of orthopedic surgical robots

(3) Mechanical arm device.

The current application of the mechanical arm on the medical robot is mainly divided into two kinds of silk drive and gear machine drive, the advantage of silk drive mechanical arm is small, can realize a certain degree of mechanical backdriving, the stiffness of the mechanical arm operation is less, the disadvantage is the easy fatigue of the steel cable drive, which will affect the accuracy, and it needs to be replaced periodically. Another is the gear motor drive system, the advantage is that it can maintain long-term accuracy, the disadvantage is that the volume is more and the operation of the feeling of stiffness.

(4) Tool set

The accessories include a sterile cover, fixator, target kit and monitor, which are used to create a sterile zone, stabilize the bone, track anatomical landmarks and monitor movement, respectively.

In summary, the product development of orthopedic surgical robots, on the one hand, need to carry out the software system suitable for the clinical operation and application habits, on the other hand, also need to break the technical barriers in the mechanical arm, optical tracking system and other hardware, to achieve the autonomy of the core technology, in order to obtain stronger product competitiveness and more market favor. Take the development of Perlove Medical to see its technology iteration. The company was founded in 2003, based on the development and production of medical X-ray machines, and gradually developed into a one-stop supplier of general radiology medical imaging equipment. With 20 years of technical deep plowing in the field of medical imaging, Perlove Medical’s self-developed PL300 orthopedic surgical robot was approved to be listed in 2022, which is a collection of intraoperative integrated scanning adaptive alignment algorithms, multi-dimensional mechanical control technology of the end of the robot and other core technologies.