High Performance Medical Robot Requirements and Accuracy Analysis

High Performance Medical Robot Requirements and Accuracy Analysis C. Mavroidis, J. Flanz, S. Dubowsky , P. Drouet and Michael Goitein 1 Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Rutgers University 98 Brett Road, Room B-217, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA Tel 732-445-0732, Fax 732-445-3124, email [email protected] 2 Northeast Proton Therapy Center, Massachusetts General Hospital Boston, MA 02114 USA, Tel 617-724-9528, Fax 617-724-9532 3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering Cambridge, MA 02139, USA, Tel 617-253-2144, Fax 617-258-7881 4 Laboratoire de Mécanique des Solides, Université de Poitiers Bât. SP2MI, 86960 Futuroscope, FRANCE, Tel 05.49.49.65.00 Abstract The treatment of disease using particle beams requires highly accurate patient positioning. Patients must be well immobilized and precisely aligned with the treatment beam to take full advantage of the dose localization potential. Robots can be used as high accuracy patient positioning systems. In this paper, the first such implementation using robotics techniques for patient positioning will be discussed. This robot is being developed for the Northeast Proton Therapy Center at the Massachusetts General Hospital. The unique requirements and design characteristics of the patient positioning system are presented. Of special interest is the system's patient positioning accuracy. A systematic methodology to perform the error analysis of serial link manipulators and its application to the PPS is described. Experimental measurements that verified the validity of the method are shown.