ESD CYCLOPS: A new robotic surgical system for GI surgery

摘要

Gastrointestinal (GI) cancers account for 1.5 million deaths worldwide.Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection (ESD) is an advanced therapeutic endoscopytechnique with superior clinical outcome due to the minimally invasive and enbloc removal of tumours. In the western world, ESD is seldom carried out, dueto its complex and challenging nature. Various surgical systems are beingdeveloped to make this therapy accessible, however, these solutions have shownlimited operational workspace, dexterity, or low force exertion capabilities.The current paper shows the ESD CYCLOPS system, a bimanual surgical roboticattachment that can be mounted at the end of any flexible endoscope. The systemis able to achieve forces of up to 46N, and showed a mean error of 0.217mmduring an elliptical tracing task. The workspace and instrument dexterity isshown by pre-clinical ex vivo trials, in which ESD is succesfully performed bya GI surgeon. The system is currently undergoing pre-clinical in vivovalidation.