ESD CYCLOPS: A new robotic surgical system for GI surgery
This addresses the problem of limited access to minimally invasive GI cancer surgery due to technical complexity, though it appears incremental as an improvement over existing robotic systems.
The paper tackles the challenge of making Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection (ESD) accessible in the western world by developing the ESD CYCLOPS system, a robotic surgical attachment that achieves forces up to 46N and a mean error of 0.217mm in tracing tasks, with successful ex vivo trials.
Gastrointestinal (GI) cancers account for 1.5 million deaths worldwide. Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection (ESD) is an advanced therapeutic endoscopy technique with superior clinical outcome due to the minimally invasive and en bloc removal of tumours. In the western world, ESD is seldom carried out, due to its complex and challenging nature. Various surgical systems are being developed to make this therapy accessible, however, these solutions have shown limited operational workspace, dexterity, or low force exertion capabilities. The current paper shows the ESD CYCLOPS system, a bimanual surgical robotic attachment that can be mounted at the end of any flexible endoscope. The system is able to achieve forces of up to 46N, and showed a mean error of 0.217mm during an elliptical tracing task. The workspace and instrument dexterity is shown by pre-clinical ex vivo trials, in which ESD is succesfully performed by a GI surgeon. The system is currently undergoing pre-clinical in vivo validation.