Design of the dullomatic: a mechanical follow-the-leader device

Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has several advantages over conventional surgery, including reduced damage to the body, less pain, lower infection risk, and faster recovery. However, MIS reduces the amount of space in which clinicians can operate within the body. This often forces them to work around delicate anatomical structures. A new type...

Design And Evaluation Of A Balanced Compliant Laparoscopic Grasper

In laparoscopic surgery, quality of haptic feedback is reduced compared to conventional surgery, leading to unintentional tissue damage during grasping. From the perspective of haptics, poor mechanical design of laparoscopic instrument joints induces friction and a nonlinear actuation-tip force relation. In this study, a novel laparoscopic...

Design of a Minimally Invasive Surgical Instrument Set: For an Innovative Titanium Implantable Vertebral Augmentation Device

Purpose<br/>As a result of the worldwide aging population, Vertebral Compression Fractures (VCF) are commonly detected in osteoporotic patients; these can originate from traumatic events or occur spontaneously. The existing VCF devices and their corresponding surgical instruments have their limitations in terms of short- and long-term...

Cryptex Programmable Memory Mechanism (CPMM): A mechanically programmable path mechanism for minimally invasive surgery tools

In the history of medicine and surgery, a slow transition is made from open surgery to minimally invasive surgery. Nowadays, natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (NOTES) is investigated and tested. A NOTES procedure includes flexible instruments, which are inserted through natural orifices such as the mouth, nose, anus or vagina. The...

Modular steering mechanism design for cable guidance through reusable minimally invasive instruments

Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) has made tremendous impact on hospitals worldwide. Introduced as a patient friendly alternative to open surgery by significantly reducing incisions size, benefits such as faster patient recovery time, and less pain for patients, are achieved. However, in MIS, rigid instrument shafts can impair surgeons’ dexterity...

Steerable and Reusable Bipolar Vessel Sealer: Design, Development and Validation

A new radical design approach arose from the need to develop a bipolar electrosurgical instrument that is modular and cleanable, thus reusable and therefore suitable for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Advanced Bipolar Vessel Sealer (BVS) instruments that are currently on the market cannot be cleaned or maintained well and are...

The development of an objective test method to evaluate the (optical) quality of rigid endoscopes at the CSSD

The quality of rigid endoscopes deteriorates during clinical use due to the sterilization process, mechanical forces and wear and tear during regular use. Regulations and standards on ensuring the quality of these instruments are currently non-existent or contain only qualitative measures, resulting in subjective examinations . Defective rigid...

Design of a novel three- dimensional-printed two degrees-of-freedom steerable electrosurgical grasper for minimally invasive surgery

In current bipolar electrosurgical instruments, a high frequency electrical sinusoidal wave is passed through the patient's body from an active electrode to the return electrode to cut, coagulate, or desiccate tissues. Even though current bipolar electrosurgical instruments have proven effective in minimizing blood loss, advancement is needed...

Design of a minimally invasive spinal cage applicator

The goal of this master thesis is to design an instrument which is able to insert an implant called a spinal cage, designed by M. Ahmadi, between two vertebrae. The spinal cage is of a new hinged, and spring loaded design, requiring a new insertion instrument, since no existing instruments are able to place the implant. The implant is used in a...