Reducing the manual length setting error of a passive Gough-Stewart platform for surgical template fabrication using a digital measurement system

verfasst von

Julia Kilian, Tobias Blum, Max Heinrich Laves, Tobias Ortmaier, Thomas Lenarz, Thomas S. Rau

Abstract

As recently demonstrated, a passive Gough-Stewart platform (a.k.a. hexapod) can be used to create a personalized surgical template to achieve minimally invasive access to the cochlea. The legs of the hexapod are manually adjusted to the desired length, which must be read off an analog scale. Previous experiments have shown that manual length setting of the hexapod's legs is error-prone because of the imprecise readability of the analog scale. The objective of this study is to determine if integration of a linear encoder and digitally displaying the measured length help reduce the length setting error. Two experiments were conducted where users set the leg length manually. In both experiments, the users were asked to set the leg length to 20 nominal values using the whole setting range from 0 mm to 10 mm. In the first experiment, users had to rely only on the analog scale; in the second experiment, the electronic display additionally showed the user the actual leg length. Results show that the mean length setting error without using the digital display and only relying on the analog scale was (0.036 ± 0.020) mm (max: 0.107 mm) in contrast to (0.001 ± 0.000) mm (max: 0.002 mm) for the experiment with the integrated digital measurement system. The results support integration of digital length measurement systems as a promising tool to increase the accuracy of surgical template fabrication and thereby patients' safety. Future studies must be conducted to evaluate if integration of a linear encoder in each of the six legs is feasible.

Organisationseinheit(en)

Institut für Mechatronische Systeme

Externe Organisation(en)

Medizinische Hochschule Hannover (MHH)

Typ

Artikel

Journal

Current Directions in Biomedical Engineering

Band

7

Seiten

89-92

Anzahl der Seiten

4

Publikationsdatum

01.10.2021

Publikationsstatus

Veröffentlicht

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Biomedizintechnik

Elektronische Version(en)

https://doi.org/10.1515/cdbme-2021-2023 (Zugang: Offen)