Comparison of Baseline Tremor under Various Microsurgical Conditions

Abstract

This paper presents the characterization and comparison of physiological tremor for pointing tasks in multiple environments, as a baseline for performance evaluation of microsurgical robotics. Previous studies have examined the characteristics of physiological tremor under laboratory settings as well as different operating conditions. However, different test methods make the comparison of results across trials and conditions difficult. Two vitroretinal microsurgeons were evaluated while performing a pointing task with no entry-point constraint, constrained by an artificial eye model, and constrained by a rabbit eye in vivo. For the three respective conditions the 3D RMS positioning error was 144 μm, 258 μm, and 285 μm, and maximum 3D error was 349 μm, 647 μm, and 696 μm. A spectral analysis was also performed, confirming a distinct peak near in the 6–12 Hz frequency range, characteristic of hand tremor during tasks in all three environments.

Hybrid position/force control of an active handheld micromanipulator for membrane peeling

“…Surveys taken to identify directions for improvement in ophthalmic procedures have indicated that positioning accuracy and tactile perception have great importance . Surgeon accuracy has been reported to be in the range 50 to 285 µm in various tasks . This accuracy represents from 0.6 to 8.6 times the thickness of the ERM, and 14 times the ILM thickness at best.…”

Robot assisted stapedotomy ex vivo with an active handheld instrument

“…Analyzing the tip trajectory signal recorded during the rosette tasks, it was possible to estimate the tremor component by applying a band-pass ideal filter with bandwidth 6-12 Hz according to [12]. The tremor was characterized by two quantities: (i) RMS tremor , RMS (root mean square) calculated on the concatenated tremor signals from all trials: $$RM{S}_{tremor}=\sqrt{{\sum }_{i=1}^m{d}_i^2∕m}$$ where d i is the 3D displacement due to tremor (Fig.…”

Robotic Retinal Surgery

“…The requirements for vision, depth perception, and fine motor control are high (Table 0.2), exceeding the fundamental physiological capability of many individuals [36,75,148]. A primary cause of tool positioning error is physiological tremor [201]. Even when microsurgical procedures [73] are successfully performed, in the presence of tremor they require greater concentration and effort and are attended by greater risk.…”