2015 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC)
DOI: 10.1109/embc.2015.7319486
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Micron is a fully handheld active micromanipulator that helps to improve position accuracy and precision in microsurgery by cancelling hand tremor. This work describes adaptation, tuning, and testing of the Micron system for stapedotomy, a microsurgical procedure performed in the middle ear to restore hearing that requires accurate manipulation in narrow spaces. Two end-effectors, a handle, and a brace (or rest) were designed and prototyped. The control system was adapted for the new hardware. The system was tested ex vivo in stapedotomy procedure comparing manually-performed and Micron-assisted surgical tasks. Tremor amplitude was found to be reduced significantly. Further testing is needed in order to obtain statistically significant results regarding other parameters dealing with regularity of the fenestra shape