This paper describes the ongoing development of a robotic assistant for microsurgery and other precise manipulation tasks. It reports a new and optimized version of a steady-hand manipulator for retinal surgery. The surgeon and the robot share control of a tool attached to the robot through a force sensor. The robot’s controller senses forces exerted by the operator on the tool and uses this in...

SUMMARY Unrecognized or untreated vasospasm in microsurgery can lead to flap hypoperfusion and failure. Numerous strategies have been explored for their efficacy in potentiating vasodilation. We present a case of unrecognized vasospasm leading to flap failure followed by a second free flap reconstruction in which severe vasospasm was treated with systemic nicardipine used as an adjunct to other...

A telerobotic platform developed in a collaboration between NASA-JPL and MicroDexterity Systems, Inc (MDS) is described in this paper. The lightweight, compact 6 dof master-slave system is precise to better than 10 microns and can cover a workspace greater than 400 cubic centimeters. Current capabilities of the system include manual position control with augmented shared control modes and autom...

The use of operating spectacles goes back just over one hundred years; the first were simple presbyopic corrections, later increased to over-correction and later coupled with the use of base-in prisms. Magnification was increased by displacement on the nose to increase the back vertex distance. About 1880, the limited magnification available with a single lens was overcome by the use of compoun...

Transanal endoscopic microsurgery may be considered medically necessary for treatment of clinical T1 rectal adenocarcinomas than cannot be removed using other means of local excision and that meet all of the following criteria:  Located in the middle or upper part of the rectum  Well or moderately differentiated (G1 or G2)  Without lymphadenopathy or microscopic angiolymphatic invasion  Les...

This paper reports on high-precision recordings of hand-held instrument motion during actual vitreoretinal microsurgery. The movement of a hand-held instrument during vitreoretinal microsurgery was recorded in six degrees of freedom. Data were acquired for 5 min using an inertial sensing module that has been developed for use with a commercially available microsurgical instrument. Maximum veloc...

Born in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir, Dr. Ashok completed his graduation from Government Medical College, Srinagar, in 1986. He completed his MS (General Surgery) at PGIMER Chandigarh in 1992. He was further selected for MCh in the Department of Plastic Surgery at PGI Chandigarh, one of the reputed Plastic Surgery centres of the country. Having completed his MCh in 1995, he joined a Fe...

Femtosecond laser microsurgery has become an advanced method for clinical procedures and biological research. The tissue treated by femtosecond laser can become highly fluorescent, indicating the formation of new fluorescent compounds that can naturally label the treated tissue site. We systematically characterized the fluorescence signals produced by femtosecond laser ablation in biological ti...