A user-friendly automated port placement planning system for laparoscopic robotic surgery

Abstract

Laparoscopic surgery is a minimally invasive surgical approach in which surgical instruments are passed through ports placed at small incisions. This approach can benefit patients by reducing recovery times and scars. Surgeons have gained greater dexterity, accuracy, and vision through adoption of robotic surgical systems. However, in some cases a preselected set of ports cannot be accommodated by the robot; the robot’s arms may cause collisions during the procedure, or the surgical targets may not be reachable through the selected ports. In this case, the surgeon must either make more incisions for more ports, or even abandon the laparoscopic approach entirely. To assist in this, we are building an easytouse system which, given a surgical task and preoperative medical images of the patient, will recommend a suitable port placement plan for the robotic surgery. This work bears two main contributions: 1) a high level user interface that assists the surgeon in operating the complicated underlying planning algorithm; and 2) an interface to assist the surgical team in implementation of the recommended plan in the operating room. We believe that such an automated port placement system would reduce setup time for robotic surgery and reduce the morbidity to patients caused by unsuitable surgical port placement.