Theragnostic mechatronics

The focus of our research is on diverse, intelligent mechatronic assistance systems for medicine. Depending on the discipline, the requirements regarding precision and accuracy as well as the necessary instruments and form of the mechatronic support differ. Our work is found in the entire facet of the clinical workflow: from the analysis of imaging procedures for diagnosis to the entire pre- and intraoperative workflow.

One focus of our work is the application-specific design, construction and optimization of instruments and tools for medical applications. This includes, for example, the design of surgical instruments, the development of stereo endoscopes or high-precision tools for minimally invasive cochlear implantation - always taking into account specific anatomical but also technical constraints. In addition to classical manufacturing and actuation processes, methods of rapid prototyping as well as so-called 'smart actuation' are used, as found in the field of continuum or soft robots.

These instruments are then used, among other things, for robot-assisted interventions. The focus is on adapting commercial systems to the constraints of medical applications on the one hand, and on developing new mechatronic assistance systems for special areas of application on the other. For example, methods for increasing accuracy in the field of robot-assisted drilling have been developed in order to realize the exact, intraoperative placement of implants. Approaches for user-friendly teleoperation or interaction with the robot are also the subject of research and are indispensable for use as surgical assistance robots. We are also testing the use of a robot for the patient-specific design of implants, for example cardiac muscle implants for supporting the heart after a heart attack.

The aforementioned research areas also repeatedly make use of medical image processing methods. For minimally invasive cochlear implantation, for example, the registration of pre- and intraoperative image data as well as the segmentation of target and risk structures for surgical planning is elementary. The analysis of movements, such as those of the vocal folds, and the corresponding predication or stabilization of the image data is also indispensable for laser-based ablation of tissue, among other things. For the targeted triggering of a protective reflex of the human larynx by a droplet shot, the trajectory is stereoscopically triangulated and modeled in order to predict an impact location on the basis of a spatial reconstruction of the target area and to display it to the user in the endoscope image in the sense of augmented reality.

For a concrete insight into our current projects, please visit our homepage: https://www.imes.uni-hannover.de/de/forschung/arbeitsgruppe-medizintechnik-bildverarbeitung/