A Patient-Specific 3D Model for Port Placement in Robotic Surgery

International audiencePort placement is a critical task in robotic laparoscopy surgery. A method for determining optimal port placement is proposed. A patient-specific 3D model of the abdomen was created from 3D images taken by a 3D scanner in the operating room and pre-operative medical images. Using the patient-specific 3D model, and the robot arms' configurations, the accessible 3D points (on the abdominal surface) for one robot arm were calculated. The possible port locations (as 3D points) were selected based on a performance index that is obtained from the outputs of an inverse kinematic problem. Repeating the process for the other robotic arms is expected to yield a set of optimal port locations for the individual patient