Magnetic Micro-Robots Pave the Way for Minimally Invasive Brain Surgery: Study Finds
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A University of Toronto Engineering team has collaborated with researchers in the Wilfred and Joyce Posluns Centre for Image Guided Innovation and Therapeutic Intervention at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) to create a set of tiny robotic tools that could enable ‘keyhole surgery’ in the brain.
In a paper published in Science Robotics, the team demonstrated the ability of these tools — only about 3 millimetres in diameter — to grip, pull and cut tissue.
Their extremely small size is made possible by the fact that they are powered not by motors but by external magnetic fields.
Current robotic surgical tools are typically driven by cables connected to electric motors, in much the same way that human fingers are manipulated by tendons in the hand that are connected to muscles in the wrist.
Instead of cables and pulleys, their robotic tools contain magnetically active materials that respond to external electromagnetic fields controlled by the surgical team.
The system consists of two parts. The first is the tiny tools themselves: a gripper, a scalpel and a set of forceps. The second part is what the team calls a coil table, which is a surgical table with several electromagnetic coils embedded inside.
In this design, the patient would be positioned with their head on top of the embedded coils, and the robotic tools would be inserted into the brain by means of a small incision.
By altering the amount of electricity flowing into the coils, the team can manipulate the magnetic fields, causing the tools to grip, pull or cut tissue as desired.
In the paper, the team reports that the cuts made with the magnetic scalpel were consistent and narrow, with an average width of 0.3 to 0.4 millimetres.
The researchers caution that it may still be a long time before these tools see the inside of an operating room.
Ref: Changyan He et al. Magnetically actuated dexterous tools for minimally invasive operation inside the brain.Sci. Robot.10,eadk4249(2025).DOI:10.1126/scirobotics.adk4249
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