Imperial Team to Develop a New ‘i-Snake’ Robot

The medical robotics team from Imperial College London has been awarded a substantial research grant from the "Wellcome Trust" to develop a new medical robot called ‘i-Snake’ over the next four years. The multidisciplinary research team is led by Professor Guang-Zhong Yang who also heads the Visual Information Processing (VIP) research at the Department of Computing in collaboration with Professor Lord Ara Darzi, one of the UK’s leading surgeons in the field of Minimum Invasive Surgery (MIS).

Minimally Invasive (or so called “Keyhole”) surgery was one of the great medical advances of the twentieth century, allowing sophisticated surgical operations to be carried out with little trauma. However, there are limits to the types of procedures that can be carried out this way. The new ‘i-Snake’, aims to provide a platform to extend the use of this surgical technique, breaking new ground across the fields of surgery and engineering. The ‘i-Snake’ will incorporate state of the art imaging and intuitive manipulation technologies, allowing surgeons to carry out more complex and demanding procedures within the body, previously only possible using more invasive surgical approaches. The ‘i-Snake’ robot will use fully articulated joints powered by special motors, with multiple sensing mechanisms and imaging tools at its ‘head’, to extend the vision and dexterity of the surgeon, allowing them to navigate difficult and restrictive regions of the body. Among the many possible applications of i-Snake are the clinical investigation of the alimentary tract, or complex, multi-vessel coronary bypass surgery. The cost benefits that the ‘i-Snake’ will introduce include earlier, cheaper and less invasive treatment, faster recovery and procedure times and intangible benefits through an increase in patient care and quality of life.

Commenting on the design of the ‘i-Snake’ design, Professor Guang-Zhong Yang said: “The i-Snake uses a biologically-inspired articulation design to allow flexible articulation of the instrument tip. It combines both intra- and inter-operative image guided surgical navigation with dynamic active constraints for improved surgical precision and safety. The project represents a unique cross-disciplinary collaboration within Imperial in imaging, sensing and robotics involving Department of Computing, Department of Surgery, and the new Institute of Biomedical Engineering. It also highlights the increasingly important role of medical image computing in reshaping the future of medical technology.”