Robotization of a ureteroscope for efficient semi-automatic vaporization of kidney stones

Benoît Rosa (1, 2) , Pierre Mozer (1, 3, 2) , Jérome Szewczyk (1, 2)

1 ISIR - Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique
2 AGATHE - Assistance aux Gestes et Applications THErapeutiques
3 CHU Pitié-Salpêtrière [AP-HP]

This paper presents a robotized system for semi-automatic vaporization of kidney stones during ureteroscopy. The kidney stone must be regularly sweeped while shooting a laser in order to efficiently vaporize it, which is a tedious task to do with current instrumentation. Shape memory alloy wires are integrated into the tip of a standard ureteroscope in order to control its movements using visual servoing. Furthermore, boundaries of the stone are detected in ureteroscopic images in order to guide the sweeping. The next step is to integrate a planning phase for the ureteroscope movements based on the stone detection algorithm.

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique

Benoît Rosa, Pierre Mozer, Jérome Szewczyk. Robotization of a ureteroscope for efficient semi-automatic vaporization of kidney stones. IEEE ICRA 2010 - Full Day Workshop on Snakes, Worms and Catheters: Continuum and Serpentine Robots for Minimally Invasive Surgery, May 2010, Anchorage, United States. ⟨hal-00975524⟩