Robots that Do Surgery in MRI Machines

Designers, including Gregory Fischer a professor of mechanical engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, have generated robots that can accomplish petty surgeries while inside an MRI scanner. Investigators from the Automation and Interventional Medicine Robotics Research Laboratory have commenced developing flexible and ceramic robots that act as mechanical surgical helpers to the surgeons during prostate biopsies in Brigham and Women’s Hospital Boston. 

How Do These Robots Work?

The aim of having these robots help surgeons during surgery is to enable the surgeons to make use of the magnetic imaging as they work. Surgeons can utilize the MRI to locate the tissue (within the prostate) that appears doubtful and then drive in the robots to take out the material. A very significant feature of these novel robots is that they are malleable and ceramic, not metallic. 
                                              
These robots can be in the MRI scanner with the patient and do not disturb the images being sent to the surgeon. Their pliable fragments and ceramic piezoelectric motors permit it to function securely. This robot can go about the drill hole of MRI without disturbing the quality of image quality. Unlike the case with an unusual biopsy (in which a surgeon hunts s patient’s prostate for malignancy via a cluster of needles and an ultrasound pointer; and since they do not have access to the best possible images they finish up taking ten to fifty specimen with the needles each one of which functions as a source of infection) here the surgeon is able to acquire a much better image of the location of prostate because the robot is able to determine the precise position where he/she can place the needle, leading to a much safer, cooler manner of performing the biopsy.