Background
Epidural anaesthesia is a Percutaneous Procedure (PP) which plays a crucial role in surgical procedures, where accurate needle insertion is still challenging. The objective of this work is to present a Tuohy needle path planning, which allows an anaesthesiologist to drive semiautonomously, with the assistance of a teleoperated robot, the tip of the needle during this PP.
Methods
We capture, analysed and modelled the anaesthetist hands' motion during the execution of this procedure, by synthetising, programing and simulating a parametrised and normalised kinematic constrains dependent on an insertion variable in a virtual robot.
Results
Two preoperative path planning models were obtained, which provide a teleoperated robot with kinematic constraints to semiautonomously drive a Tuohy needle in the epidural anaesthesia procedure.
Conclusions
A semiautonomous robot can assist in the execution of this PP using the kinematic constraints obtained from the study of the movement of a specialist's hands.