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.
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