A System Approach to Medical Robotics

摘要

Today's image-acquisition devices (X-ray, CT, MRT, US etc.) provide the possibility to look into the human body. New computer- and sensor-aided methods of treatment planning and medical navigation are being developed on the patient-data visualization base. In comparison with the physician's hand, the novel robots have a significantly higher precision and never get tired. Therefore, more and more new subtasks in different medical fields under control of a physician are delegated to technical assistance systems. Thus a new medical engineering field emerges, which establishes itself as medical robotics. In this paper, the medical robotics evolution is considered from the conventional treatment, via the integration of the planning, navigation, and robot assistance, up to the introduction of intelligent medical robots. Here, the emphasis is placed on the systemic problems of this new medical engineering field.