Microscope-Guided Autonomous Clear Corneal Incision

Clear Corneal Incision, a challenging step in cataract surgery, and important to the overall quality of the surgery. New surgeons usually spend one full year trying to perfect their incision, but even after such rigorous training deficient incisions can still occur. This paper proposes an autonomous robotic system for this self-sealing incision. A conventional ophthalmic microscope system with a monocular camera is utilized to capture the surgical scene, ascertain the robot’s position, and estimate depth information. Kinematics with a remote centre of motion (RCM) is designed for a multi-axes robot to perform the incision route. The experimental results on ex-vivo porcine eyes show the autonomous Clear Corneal Incision has a stricter three-plane structure than a surgeon-made incision, which is closer to the ideal incision.