The Acrobot system for total knee replacement

摘要

A "hands-on" robotic system for total knee replacement (TKR) surgery is presented. Computed tomography (CT) based software is used to accurately plan the procedure pre-operatively. Intra-operatively, the surgeon guides a small, special-purpose robot, called Acrobot, which is mounted on a gross positioning device. The Acrobot uses active constraint control, which constrains the motion to a pre-defined region, and thus allows the surgeon to safely cut the knee bones to fit a TKR prosthesis with high precision. A non-invasive anatomical registration method is used. The system has undergone early clinical trials with very promising outcomes.