S3D: A Spatial Steerable Surgical Drilling Framework for Robotic Spinal Fixation Procedures

TL;DR

This paper presents S3D, a novel robotic framework enabling realistic, steerable spinal drilling that considers anatomical constraints, validated through experiments on vertebral phantoms.

Contribution

Introduction of S3D, a spatial steerable surgical drilling framework integrated with a robotic manipulator for spinal fixation procedures.

Findings

Successful steerable drilling across all vertebral levels.

Effective calibration, registration, and navigation procedures.

Validated framework through experiments on vertebral phantoms.

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce S3D: A Spatial Steerable Surgical Drilling Framework for Robotic Spinal Fixation Procedures. S3D is designed to enable realistic steerable drilling while accounting for the anatomical constraints associated with vertebral access in spinal fixation (SF) procedures. To achieve this, we first enhanced our previously designed concentric tube Steerable Drilling Robot (CT-SDR) to facilitate steerable drilling across all vertebral levels of the spinal column. Additionally, we propose a four-Phase calibration, registration, and navigation procedure to perform realistic SF procedures on a spine holder phantom by integrating the CT-SDR with a seven-degree-of-freedom robotic manipulator. The functionality of this framework is validated through planar and out-of-plane steerable drilling experiments in vertebral phantoms.