New Robot May be Able to Conduct Brain Surgery for Epilepsy Through the Cheek

When it comes to epilepsy, those who are most severely affected often have to undergo surgery. Surgeons drill a hole through their skull deep into the brain to destroy the small area where the seizures originate. Now, though, researchers have may found a safer and less invasive way to address these seizures.

In this case, the scientists examined the region of the brain affected: the hippocampus. This region is located at the bottom of the brain. The researchers believed that it was possible to potentially develop a robotic device that pokes through the cheek and enters the brain from underneath, which would avoid having to drive through the skull.

Actually creating the device wasn't easy, though. The researchers had to develop a shape-memory alloy needle that could be precisely steered along a curving path and a robotic platform that could operate inside the powerful magnetic field created by an MRI scanner. Now, though, the scientists have developed a prototype.

"I've done a lot of work in my career on the control of pneumatic systems," said Eric Barth, who headed the project, in a news release. "We knew we had this ability to have a robot in the MRI scanner, doing something in a way that other robots could not. Then we thought, 'What can we do that would have the highest impact?'"

Currently, the researchers plan to test the surgical robot on cadavers. In fact, the scientists estimate that the robot could be in operating rooms within the next decade.

The findings could be huge in terms of treating epilepsy in patients. In addition, the robot could be used for other applications and could be important when it comes to accessing the hippocampus and not drilling through a person's skull.

The working prototype was presented in a live demonstration at the Fluid Power Innovation and Research Conference in Nashville.