Data and code from: Head-mounted surgical robots are an enabling technology for subretinal injections

Therapeutic protocols involving subretinal injection, which hold the
promise of saving or restoring sight, are challenging for surgeons because
they are at the limits of human motor and perceptual abilities. Excessive
or insufficient indentation of the injection cannula into the retina, or
motion of the cannula with respect to the retina, can result in retinal
trauma or incorrect placement of the therapeutic product. Robotic
assistance holds the promise of enabling the surgeon to more precisely
position the injection cannula and maintain its position for a prolonged
period of time. However, head motion is common among patients undergoing
eye surgery, complicating subretinal injections, yet it is often not
considered in the evaluation of robotic assistance. There exists no prior
study that has both included head motion during an evaluation of robotic
assistance and demonstrated a significant improvement in the ability to
perform subretinal injections compared to the manual approach. In a hybrid
ex/in vivo study, in which an enucleated eye is mounted on a human
volunteer, we demonstrate that head-mounting a high-precision teleoperated
surgical robot to passively reduce undesirable relative motion between the
robot and the eye results in a bleb-formation success rate that is
significantly higher than the manual success rates achieved by surgeons
even in stationary enucleated eyes.