Design of Flexible Micro Manipulator for Neurosurgery

Today, endoscopic surgery is widely used in the field of abdominal and urological surgeries. But it is still difficult to be applied on the tumor resection in neurosurgery because the work space is very narrow and tumor is seated deeply under normal brain. The authors developed a flexible micro manipulator for the resection of deeply seated tumor three years ago, but detail design and fabrication process has not been explained. In this paper the design procedure is introduced in detail and evaluation of the developed mechanism is performed. First, functional requirements in the resection of brain tumor are investigated. Then the considerable mechanism and their constraints are discussed. Next the design of our flexible mechanism and fabrication method is explained. The developed manipulator can elastically flex at the end part and can rotate at the end of the manipulator. The design of the structure for elastically flexible manipulator and its fabrication is explained. The merit of this mechanism for the resection of tumor is discussed. The motion ability or problems of the developed system are investigated comparing with other manipulator mechanism. Finally subjects for the future application to the real surgery are discussed.