The HMSL Telesurgery System

This page, currently under construction (and coming soon!), will describe the various components of the HMSL telesurgery system, including the teleoperator and remote control surgical tool, and the audio/video system we used, including the delay generation equipment. Here's a quick look at the system as a whole, as it was demonstrated at Telemedicine: New Technologies for Health Care, a conference presented by the MIT Industrial Liaison Program, April 1-2, 1996.

Telesurgery system components. This "patient" is a modified CPR manikin

In the mean time, you can look at some of the other images from the telesurgery experiments...

Hardware

• The surgeon's master tool handle.
• The teleoperated tool, details of the tool, and details of the interchangeable tool tips
• We used this simulator for our experiments, and we created a second version to resemble a real human more closely.

Experiment Tasks

• Grasp and transfer task: basic manipulation of soft objects.
• Grasp and transfer with orientation task: manipulation of objects to be grasped only at specified locations (e.g. ends of clips)
• Use of clip applier task: use of a real laparoscopic clip applier to simulate placing surgical clips on blood vessels prior to cutting them. A real analogue to this task would occur during a gall bladder removal operation, when blood vessels and the cystic duct must be cut.
• Use of scissors task: using a grasper and scissors to remove excess suture material after knot tying.

You can also visit the original cooperative telesurgery page, which will soon be updated to include sample results from our experiments.