Tiny-Wheeled Robots, the Surgeons of the Future

Future surgery will be performed by tiny-wheeled robots which will be slipped into the abdomen and controlled by surgeons hundreds of kilometers away.

This way, the lives of the roadside accident victims and soldiers injured on the battlefield will be saved without requiring the presence of specialized medical personnel.

Each camera-carrying robot, the width of a lipstick case, would illuminate the patient's abdomen, beam back video images and carry different tools to help surgeons stop internal bleeding by clamping, clotting or cauterizing wounds.

"This work has the potential to completely change the minimally invasive surgery landscape," said Dmitry Oleynikov, M.D., director of education and training for the minimally invasive and computer-assisted surgery initiative. "This is just the start of things to come regarding robotic devices at work inside the body during surgery."

It's a stark contrast to existing laparoscopic techniques, which allow surgeons to perform operations through small incisions. The benefits of laparoscopy are limited to less complex procedures, however, because of losses in imaging and dexterity compared to conventional surgery.

"These remotely controlled in vivo robots provide the surgeon with an enhanced field of view from arbitrary angles, as well as provide dexterous manipulators not constrained by small incisions in the abdominal wall," Dr. Oleynikov said.

In fact, the view is better than the naked eye, he said, because the in-color pictures from the roaming robots are magnified 10x.

"Our family of tiny-wheeled robots has the potential to revolutionize the minimally invasive surgery field," Dr. Oleynikov said. "It will replace standard surgery and at some point the surgeon's hands won't need to be in the body at all."

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