Robotic neurosurgery and clinical applications

This paper presents robotic neurosurgery and clinical applications. Firstly, background, objective, motivation and distinct properties of this kind of surgical robots are introduced. Secondly, by analysing current main classifications for surgical robots, neurosurgical robots are divided into two groups, namely, neurosurgical robots anid tele-neurosurgical robots. Then, after the history of surgical robots is briefly reviewed, several prototypes of neurosurgical robots currently used in clinics are discussed in details. As a branch of surgical robots, the design issues about neurosurgical robots not only have the common part as surgical robots, but this field has its special issues, such as high complex image modeling and analysis, high accuracy, and high safety. Therefore, current research challenges are provided and consideratialn about tele-robotic neurosurgical design is put forward. Finally, this paper is concluded with future directions.