Medical robotics and computer-integrated interventional medicine

Computer-Integrated Interventional Medicine (CIIM) promises to have a profound impact on health care in the next 20 years, much as and for many of the same reasons that the marriage of computers and information processing methods with other technology have had on manufacturing, transportation, and other sectors of our society. Our basic premise is that the steps of creating patient-specific computational models, using these models for planning, registering the models and plans with the actual patient in the operating room, and using this information with appropriate technology to assist in carrying out and monitoring the intervention are best viewed as part of a complete patient-specific intervention process that occurs over many time scales. Further, the information generated in computer-integrated interventions can be captured and analyzed statistically to improve treatment processes. This paper will explore these themes briefly, using examples drawn from our work at the Engineering Research Center for Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology (CISST ERC).