Surgeons may have a new competitor in the recently developed biocompatible near-infrared 3D tracking system used in the first smart tissue autonomous robot (STAR) surgery. The system improves upon current manual and robot-assisted surgeries with advanced 3D visibility and accuracy.

A study developed at the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation at Children's National Health System and funded by the National Institutes of Health outlines the benefits of this surgical system in live subjects, showcasing its 3D tissue tracking abilities and millimeter accuracy.

"A fundamental challenge in soft-tissue surgery is that target tissue moves and deforms, becomes occluded by blood or other tissue, which makes it difficult to differentiate from surrounding tissue," said Axel Krieger, Ph.D., senior author on the study and program lead for Smart Tools at the Sheikh Zayed Institute. "By enabling accurate tracking of tools and tissue in the surgical environment, this innovative work has the potential to improve many applications for manual and robot-assisted surgery."

The 3D system is made up of biocompatible near-infrared fluorescent (NIRF) markers with a fused plenoptic near-infrared camera tracking system, giving the system the ability to overcome blood and tissue occlusion. The system showed tracking accuracies at 1.61mm, that only decreased to 1.71mm when covered in blood and tissue, making for higher quality and consist suturing for reduced leakage.

"This work describes the 'super human eyes' and a bit of 'intelligence' of our STAR robotic system, making tasks such as soft tissue surgery on live subjects possible," explains Peter C. Kim, M.D., vice president and associate surgeon in chief of the Sheikh Zayed Institute.