Optical Coherence Tomography Guided Robotic Needle Insertion for Deep Anterior Lamellar Keratoplasty.
Journal:
IEEE transactions on bio-medical engineering
PMID:
31751219
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Deep anterior lamellar keratoplasty (DALK) significantly reduces the post-transplantation morbidity in patients eligible for partial-thickness cornea grafts. The popular "big bubble" technique for DALK is so challenging, however, that a significant fraction of corneal pneumodissection attempts fail for surgeons without extensive DALK-specific experience, even with previous-generation cross-sectional optical coherence tomography (OCT) guidance. We seek to develop robotic, volumetric OCT-guided technology capable of facilitating or automating the difficult needle insertion step in DALK.