Researchers are developing a robot made from plastic and ceramic motors that can perform surgery on a patient inside a magnetic resonance imaging machine where metal is a no-no.
The robot, developed by Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Johns Hopkins University, has been used in trials on more than a dozen patients needing prostate biopsies. From IEEE Spectrum:
The radiologists can use real-time MRI images to guide the movement of their robotic assistant, which they believe will provide unprecedented accuracy. (If you’re wondering how it works, here’s a descriptive line from a journal article the researchers published last year: “The patient lies inside the MRI scanner . . . and the robot accesses the prostate through the perineal wall.”)
"Inside an MRI, a Non-Metallic Robot Performs Prostate Surgery"
