Urology Robotics, or URobotics, is a new interdisciplinary field for the application of robots in urology and for the development of such systems and novel technologies in this clinical discipline.
Urology is among the medical fields with the highest rate of technology advances, which for several years has included the use medical
robots.
Applications
The first surgical robot approved by the FDA is the
da Vinci system. Even though this was designed to assist in general
Laparoscopy, most of its application are in the urology field for
radical prostatectomy
Prostatectomy (from the Greek , "prostate" and , "excision") as a medical term refers to the surgical removal of all or part of the prostate gland. This operation is done for benign conditions that cause urinary retention, as well as for prosta ...
. Pioneered at the
Vattikuti Urology Institute
The Vattikuti Urology Institute (VUI) at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, is a clinical and research center for urological care.
It is known for being the first institute to implement robotic surgery as a type of treatment for patie ...
, robotic radical prostatectomy has now become the gold standard for the treatment of prostate cancer.
Other, URobotic systems are under development. These include image-guided robots that, in addition to the direct visual feedback, use medical images for guiding the intervention. Since
MRI provides enhanced visualization of soft-tissues compared to
x-ray-based imaging,
MRI compatible robots are being developed to assist the physician in performing the interventio
in the MRI scanner If prostate cancer lesions can be delineated in the image, robots can accurately target those lesions for
biopsy or focal
ablations.
References
Urology
Medical robotics
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