Maarten Steinbuch’s group from TU/Eindhoven has already developed robots that enable surgeons to perform extremely precise operations that human hands are not capable of performing. A well-known example is the start-up Preceyes, which developed a robotic system to allow eye surgeons to undertake highly precise operations.

Highly precise removal of bone

Jordan Bos, PhD at Mechanical Engineering, will be building an experiment for his study into medical surgery on cancer around the ear. The new robot will, like its Preceyse and Microsure predecessors, be used for medical intervention. This time the research concerns the highly precise removal of bone. Part of the money from the award will be used on this research.

This new robot uses existing data from CT scans and will be able to remove cancer in the area around the ear. It is very difficult to get to those regions with human hands because of the extremely critical structures hidden in the petrous bone. In addition, the robot is expected to be able to perform better hearing (cochlear) implant surgery.