M.-A. Vitrani

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Sorbonne University

In the context of keyhole surgery, and more particularly of uterine biopsy, the fine automatic movements of a surgical instrument held by a robot with 3 active DOF’s require an exact knowledge of the point of rotation of the instrument. However, this center of rotation is not fixed and moves during an examination. This paper deals with a new method...

Robot-Assisted Laparoscopic Surgery (RALS) is now prevalent in operating rooms. This situation requires future surgeons to learn Classic Laparoscopic Surgery (CLS) and RALS simultaneously. Therefore, along with the investigation of the differences in performance between the two techniques, it is essential to study the impact of training in RALS on...

Surgery may involve precise instrument tip positioning in a minimally invasive way. During these operations, the instrument is inserted in the body through an orifice. The movements of the instrument are constrained by interaction forces arising at the orifice level. The physical constraints may drastically vary depending on the patient’s anatomy....

Study Objective The differential diagnosis of fibroids could be challenging with other uterine masses including adenomyomas or uterine cancers and sarcomas. Minimally Invasive procedures including morcellation mandates a thorough imaging and if possible histologic analyses. To date such a pathologic approach has a very poor accuracy, even conducted...

Robotic-assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) is adopted more and more as it overcomes the shortcomings of classic MIS for surgeons while keeping the benefits of small incisions for patients. However, introducing new technology oftentimes affects the work of skilled practitioners. Our goals are to investigate the impacts of telemanipulated surg...

Purpose: Robots with a spherical unactuated wrist can be used for minimally invasive surgery. With such a robot, positioning the wrist center controls the instrument tip position when assuming that the insertion site behaves like a lever with a fixed and known fulcrum. In practice, this assumption is not always respected. In this paper we first st...

The comanipulation paradigm, in which a user and a robot simultaneously hold a tool, allows for gesture guidance. In particular, virtual fixtures, which are geometrical constraints imposed to the tool by the robot, have received great interest in the domain of surgical applications. So far, this concept has been implemented in the context of open s...

Purpose: A comanipulator for assisting endorectal prostate biopsies is evaluated through a first-in-man clinical trial. This lightweight system, based on conventional robotic components, possesses six degrees of freedom. It uses three electric motors and three brakes. It features a free mode, where its low friction and inertia allow for natural ma...

This research is situated in the context of breast cancer detection where the standard procedure is the succession of an initial mammography (MX) examination and a supplementary ultrasound (US) scan. One major difficulty of this procedure results from the fact that breast geometry changes between both examinations due to different patient's positio...

The PROSBOT project aims to improve the clinical gesture of prostate biopsy sampling through a pedagogic simulator and a robotic assistance system. The objective of the simulator is to improve the learning curve of systematic and targeted prostate biopsy acquisition through realistic simulations of the gesture and a multitude of pedagogic modules....

A robotic device, aimed at assisting a urologist in positioning an endorectal ultrasound probe to perform prostate biopsies, is presented. The proposed system is a comanipulator that holds the probe simultaneously with the urologist. This robot supports two modes of operation: the free mode, where the entire movement control is left to the urologis...

A novel robotic device, aimed at assisting a urologist in performing prostate biopsies guided by an endorectal ultrasound probe, is described. The paper describes the robot kinematics and the actuation system. The actuation system combines electromagnetic brakes, balancing springs, and electrical motors with cable transmissions. The robot supports...

Despite the continuous improvement of master interfaces, distant robot teleoperation remains a challenging task. In many applications, including robot-assisted single port laparoscopic surgery and NOTES, the operator has only an indirect vision of the remote environment, provided by a video camera usually mounted on the robot end-effector itself an...

This paper is a review of a previous musician/harp interaction study leading to the specifications of a configurable excitatory mechanism. Such robotic tools can be valuable to investigate the musician/instrument interaction and the mechanical behavior of an instrument in a repeatable and realistic musical context. To design a robotised excitatory...

We investigate the possibility of providing adequate task assistance using under-actuated robots for human-robot tool co-manipulation. This novel approach optimizes robot-user synergy without taking into account any a priori knowledge of parameters depending on the user. Six different actuation modes were compared for a localization and scanning ta...

This chapter presents the general principles that guide the design and control of comanipulation systems, separately considering the parallel and serial configurations. It then presents in detail the two types of systems, showing their application to various forms of surgery. This is a point that needs to be addressed in concluding this chapter bec...

Despite the continuous improvement of master interfaces, distant robot teleoperation remains a challenging task. In many applications (e.g. spaceships, underwater or flying drones, robotic arms that operate in hazardous conditions in factories), the operator has only an indirect vision of the remote environment, provided by a video camera usually m...

This paper describes results about the development of a repeatable and configurable robotic finger designed to pluck harp strings. Eventually, this device will be a tool to study string instruments in playing conditions. We use a classical robot with two degrees of freedom enhanced with silicone fingertips. The validation method requires a comparis...

The study of musical instruments in playing conditions requires a highly controllable and repeatable excitatory mechanism. This mechanism has to be able to reproduce as closely as possible the human gesture in order to be representative of a playing technique. In the paper, we describe the development of a new string plucking device for the concert...

In this paper, the concept of ultrasound image-based force enhancement is introduced. It consists of a robotic comanipulation system that assists a surgeon performing an ultrasound exam through a minimally invasive access. The robot is programmed in such a way that the surgeon's feeling of the distal contact between the probe and the organ is enhan...

The possibility to provide an adequate task assistance using underactuated robots for human-robot tool comanipulation is investigated. This novel approach does not take into account any a priori knowledge about user depending parameters however optimizes the robot-user synergy, for instance during US breast examinations. Results show that the exami...

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in developing systems that couple a robotic device with an ultrasound imager. Applications range from automatic probe positioning to ultrasound image-based guidance of instruments. One issue in these systems is to determine, prior to the intervention, the localization of the probe with respect...

This paper presents a robust visual servoing approach for automatic guidance of an instrument. The visual sensor is an ultrasound probe that observes an instrument which is inserted into the beating heart of a patient and manipulated by a robot. The present paper provides stability analysis, robustification of the control law and an in vivo experim...

The goal of this research is to propose a robotic system to assist a surgeon performing ultrasound-guided interventions. To this aim, a system exploiting ultrasound-based visual servoing is developed, thanks to which the surgeon can select the desired position of an instrument in an ultrasound image. The robot then automatically moves the instrumen...

Minimally invasive surgery in combination with ultrasound (US) imaging imposes high demands on the sur geon’s hand-eye-coordination capabilities. A possible solution to reduce these requirements is minimally invasive robotic surgery in which the instrument is guided by visual servoing towards the goal defined by the surgeon in the US image. This ap...

Visual servoing is a possible solution to assist the surgeon in performing tasks under ultrasound (US) imaging. To this aim, a system was developed that allows the surgeon to select a desired instrument location on a US image. Then a robot is programmed to automatically move the instrument towards the selected location. This approach requires robus...

Minimally invasive surgery in combination with ultrasound (US) imaging imposes high demands on the surgeon's hand-eye-coordination capabilities. A possible solution to reduce these requirements is minimally invasive robotic surgery in which the instrument is guided by visual servoing towards the goal defined by the surgeon in the US image. This app...

Minimally invasive surgery in combination with ultrasound (US) imaging imposes high demands on the surgeon's hand-eye-coordination capabilities. A possible solution to reduce these requirements is minimally invasive robotic surgery in which the instrument is guided by visual servoing towards the goal defined by the surgeon in the US image. This app...

Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) challenges the surgeon’s skills due to his separation from the operation area which can be reached with long instruments only. Therefore, the surgeon loses access to the manipulation forces inside the patient. This reduces his dexterity when performing the operation. A new compact and lightweight robot for MIS is pr...

In this paper, the experimental closed loop torque control of electro-rheological fluids (ERF) based actuators for haptic applications is performed. ERFs are liquids that respond mechanically to electric fields by changing their properties, such as viscosity and shear stress, electroactively. Using the electrically controlled rheological properties...

Force-feedback mechanisms have been designed to simplify and enhance the human-vehicle interface. The increase in secondary controls within vehicle cockpits has created a desire for a simpler, more efficient human-vehicle interface. By consolidating various controls into a single, haptic feedback control device, information can be transmitted to th...

L'objectif de ce travail de thèse est de proposer un système robotique basé sur un asservissement visuel échographique pour l'assistance au chirurgien lors d'interventions écho-guidées. Ce système permet au chirurgien de sélectionner la position désirée d'un instrument dans une image échographique et de commander un robot pour qu'il déplace l'instr...

This paper presents a visual servoing approach for automatic guidance of an instrument. In this approach, the visual sensor is an ultrasound probe that observes an instrument inserted inside the beating heart of a patient and manipulated by a robot. Following the preliminary results presented, the present paper provides a new parameterization of th...