Robotic surgery and planning for corrective femur osteotomy

This paper describes a system that assists in the planning and the performing of a surgical action, namely the corrective osteotomy of the thigh bone (femur). The corrective osteotomy of the thigh bone is used for changing the posture of the hip joint. During surgery, a small cross-sectional slice is cut out of the thigh bone by the use of a sawing device. Our system supports the planning phase of this surgery by allowing interactive visualizations of the cutting planes using a 3D surface-oriented model of the thigh bone derived from computer tomography (CT). It also supports the actual surgery, in which a robot hand is steered towards the predetermined cutting planes, a process that is guided and monitored by a vision system