Concentric Tube Robot Optimization and Path Planning for Epilepsy Surgeries

Although robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has been widely investigated in recent years, limited access to the surgical sites in children's small anatomic cavities with current surgical tools is still a major concern in pediatric neurosurgery. Concentric tube robots (CTR), a class of continuum robot with flexible backbones and small diameters, are potential solutions to this problem. To demonstrate CTRs' use in epilepsy surgeries, this work proposes an evolutionary-based optimization framework, which could be used to find optimal patient-specific and procedure-specific CTR design parameters and surgical paths subject to anatomical constraints. Three sets of real patient data are used to evaluate this framework, and the validity of the generated surgical plans are verified by neurosurgeons, the platform's primary users.