Autonomous Vision-Guided Resection of Central Airway Obstruction
Journal:
arXiv
Published Date:
Feb 25, 2025
Abstract
Existing tracheal tumor resection methods often lack the precision required
for effective airway clearance, and robotic advancements offer new potential
for autonomous resection. We present a vision-guided, autonomous approach for
palliative resection of tracheal tumors. This system models the tracheal
surface with a fifth-degree polynomial to plan tool trajectories, while a
custom Faster R-CNN segmentation pipeline identifies the trachea and tumor
boundaries. The electrocautery tool angle is optimized using handheld surgical
demonstrations, and trajectories are planned to maintain a 1 mm safety
clearance from the tracheal surface. We validated the workflow successfully in
five consecutive experiments on ex-vivo animal tissue models, successfully
clearing the airway obstruction without trachea perforation in all cases (with
more than 90% volumetric tumor removal). These results support the feasibility
of an autonomous resection platform, paving the way for future developments in
minimally-invasive autonomous resection.
