Chinese researchers develop eye surgery robot

BEIJING -- A team of Chinese researchers has developed an autonomous robotic system capable of performing delicate eye injections within the confined space of the human eye, potentially enhancing the precision and safety of surgeries used to treat debilitating retinal diseases.

The surgery robot, developed by a team from the Institute of Automation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, successfully performed subretinal and intravascular injections in animal tests with 100 percent success, according to a study published recently in the journal Science Robotics.

Eye surgery, particularly involving the retina, is highly challenging due to the organ's tiny, soft structures. The new system uses a suite of algorithms for 3D spatial perception, cross-scale precise positioning, and trajectory control to guide a robotic arm.

In experiments using eyeball phantoms, ex vivo porcine and in vivo animal eyeballs, the autonomous robot significantly reduced average positioning errors by nearly 80 percent compared to manual surgery, and by about 55 percent compared to surgeon-controlled robotic surgery, according to the study.

These results demonstrate the clinical feasibility of an autonomous intraocular microsurgical robot, and its ability to enhance injection precision, safety and consistency.

Such an autonomous system could enhance surgical consistency and safety, shorten training periods for surgeons, and potentially enable complex eye operations in remote areas or extreme environments where specialist surgeons are unavailable, according to the researchers.