Advanced Diagnosis and Therapy

　　Minimally Invasive Diagnosis and Therapy Techniques, Surgical Instrument and Medical Robotics.
　

High-precision Minimally Invasive Medical Robotics and Image-guided Intervention System
　　Targeting different surgical treatments, multiple minimally invasive medical robotics and image-guided intervention systems were developed. For example, rigid-flexible outer sheath devices using a slider-linkage locking mechanism by air pressure (Yagi et al., MICCAI 2006) and pneumatic locking mechanism (Zuo et al., MIAR 2008) have been developed for minimally invasive endoscopic surgery; a surgical manipulator system was developed for anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (Liao et al., IROS 2007); a miniature bending manipulator for fetoscopic intrauterine laser therapy and twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome treatment was developed (Yamashita et al., Surgical Endoscopy 2009); a coaxial laser endoscope with arbitrary spots in the endoscopic view was developed for fetal surgery (Yamanaka et al., IJCARS 2009; MICCAI 2009); and an intravascular catheter navigation system using path planning and intra-operative feedback was developed for treatment of oral cancer (Wang et al., IJMRCAS 2011).

Novel Surgical Manipulator for Minimally Invasive Endoscopic Fetal Surgery
　　Minimally invasive endoscopic fetal surgery enables intrauterine intervention with reduced risk to the mother and fetus. A novel surgical manipulator has been developed for stabilizing the fetus and restraining it from floating free during endoscopic intrauterine surgery (Liao et al., IJMRCAS 2008). The flexible joint and bending mechanisms enable the stabilizer to reach the target sites within the confined space of the uterus under guidance of an ultrasound device. The manipulator also has the potential to be used in minimally invasive intrauterine surgery. Furthermore, a fast image mapping system using endoscopic image mosaics with 3D ultrasound image was developed for intrauterine fetal surgery (Liao et al., MITAT 2009).

Integrated Diagnosis and Therapeutic System for Precision Tumor Resection
　　An integrated diagnosis and therapeutic system has been established for precision malignant-gliomas resection during neurosurgery (Liao et al., Medical Image Analysis 2012). A combination of MRI navigation and 5-aminolevulinic acid-induced fluorescence based intra-operative tumor diagnosis was incorporated into a robotic laser ablation neurosurgery system with an automatic focusing and robotic scanning mechanism. The fluorescence is generated with laser excitation, enables intra-operative identification of the position of a tumor, and provides guidance for resection with laser photocoagulation. The accuracy of the fluorescent measurement of the tumor is improved by using high-precision spectral analysis (Ando et al., Brain Tumor Pathology 2011). Furthermore, a galvano mirror scanning mechanism is integrated into the fluorescence measurement and the laser-ablation devices for automatic tumor-area scanning and its corresponding laser ablation (Liao et al., Laser in Medical Science 2012).