Lee Zourelias

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Lee Zourelias is a biomedical robotics researcher whose work focuses on the intersection of soft robotics, minimally invasive surgery, and cardiac intervention. Their key research areas include organ-mounted robotic systems, autonomous surgical navigation, and computer vision for intraoperative guidance. Zourelias made a major contribution to the field with their work on the HeartLander platform—a tethered, suction-based robot that crawls across the beating heart to deliver targeted therapies. Specifically, their 2021 paper on coronary vessel detection methods for organ-mounted robots (3 citations) addressed a critical safety challenge: enabling HeartLander to autonomously avoid coronary vasculature during medication injections or tissue ablation. This work demonstrates Zourelias’s commitment to enhancing the precision and safety of cardiac robotics, laying groundwork for future autonomous surgical systems. While their citation count is still early-stage, the novelty of their approach—combining real-time vessel detection with a mobile cardiac robot—positions them as an emerging voice in surgical robotics. Their research holds promise for reducing invasiveness in cardiac procedures and improving patient outcomes.