Visually servoed suturing for robotic microsurgical keratoplasty

The robotic system is developed to improve the effect of microsurgery for keratoplasty. The autonomous suturing should be qualified for the operational requirements of microsurgical keratoplasty. Poorly modeled mechanism of robotic micromanipulator and slight movements of surgical objective point are hindrance for precise position and orientation of end-needle. Visual servo control is available to overcome these obstacles. An appropriate scheme of robotic vision is proposed. On the basis of biological binocular vision, a feasible method of calibration and reconstruction for surgical microscope is adopted. The model parameters estimated by linear regression are evaluated for accuracy, stability and robustness. The visual servo control is applied for guiding robotic end-needle to reach the penetrating objective point. The visual servo control has look-and-move architecture based on image feature. The experimental results show that the robotic system for microsurgical keratoplasty can fulfill the surgical task of suturing penetration precisely.