A Preoperative Planning Procedure for Robotically Assisted Minimally Invasive Interventions

A successful robotically assisted minimally invasive intervention necessitates preoperative planning which is done by the surgeon to prepare the intervention and to decide about the best access to the surgical site. In the context of robotically assisted minimally invasive surgery, this requires to optimally place ports and robots such that important conditions and requirements like sufficient dexterity, optimal view and a collision free workspace are satisfied. This paper describes the preoperative planning procedure currently under development for the DLR minimally invasive robotic surgery system which utilizes an optimization procedure.