Development of tools for measuring the performance of computer assisted orthopaedic hip surgery systems

Abstract

In the late seventies a sensor was invented, which could track the movement of athlete body parts. In the early eighties an improved version of this sensor was introduced, by a group of NIST researchers, for the calibration and the performance testing of industrial robots. In the late eighties people experimented with the use of these sensors for human brain operations and in the early nineties these sensors were introduced to orthopaedic operations and the field of Computer Assisted Orthopaedic Surgery (CAOS) was born. Although significant progress has been made in the design and use of these sensors for medical applications, there are still sources of accuracy errors that must be addressed. This paper describes our work on the development of tools for the calibration and performance testing of CAOS systems, which can be used inside operating rooms.