Primary step for endoscopic sinonasal tract and anterior skull base robotics

Introduction: Surgeons have evolved a lot their surgical procedures in sinus surgery and are now able to resect malignant tumors. These progresses are now leading new difficulties like impairing vision (bleeding and LCR flow) and necessity of multiple simultaneous tasks. With the aim of designing a new endoscope-holder, primary step was to characterize the surgeon gesture, the kinematics, and the type of man-machine interface acceptable by the surgeon. Methods: We worked on thirteen sinonasal tracts of cadaver heads. Surgical procedures were: opening all the sinuses, the carotid, the sella turcica, the lamina papyracea and the anterior skull base. We used conventional instruments which were instrumented with a force-torque sensor and a navigation system. Then we have experimentally evaluated robots with three different kinematics and two types of man-machine interfaces. Results: We collected enough position and force data as well as kinematics constraints and interface requirements to specify a robot for endoscopic sinus surgery.