Surgical Robots and Three- Dimensional Displays for Computer-Aided Surgery

Surgery in the 21st century will use advanced technologies such as surgical robots, three-dimensional medical imaging, computer graphics, computer simulation technology, and others. Three-dimensional medical imaging for surgical operations provides surgeons with advanced vision. A surgical robot provides surgeons with an advanced hand, but it is not a machine to perform the same action of a surgeon using scissors or scalpels. Recently, two new systems were developed in Japan: an advanced vision system called integral videography (IV), which can project a full-color three-dimensional video image in real threedimensional space, and a novel robotic endoscopic system using two wedge prisms at the tip, which can observe a wide area without moving or bending the endoscope. As an advanced hand, a high-safety navigation robot of the laparoscope and a forceps manipulator with a bending mechanism have also been developed in Japan. The advanced vision and hands available to surgeons are creating new surgical fields in the 21st century: minimally invasive surgery, noninvasive surgery, virtual reality microsurgery, telesurgery, fetal surgery, neuroinformatics surgery, and others.