Path planning for robot assisted femur shaft fracture reduction : A preliminary investigation

When doing femur fracture reduction surgery, both the patient and the surgeon are exposed to a great amount of radiation, which is harmful to their health. Computer assisted orthopaedic surgery (CAOS) is a less invasive approach for its ability to reduce the usage of image intensifier. The authors have developed a six degree of freedom (DOF) parallel-serial surgical robot named D´cros(Dual Cartesian robot for orthopaedic surgeon) for fracture reduction surgery. To perform automatic fracture reduction surgery, reduction path for D´cros is needed. This paper presents an initial investigation of an automatic reduction path planning algorithm based on the shortest linear path.