Research Center for Biomedical Technologies and Robotics

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Research Center for Biomedical Technologies and Robotics (RCBTR)

RCBTR Description: Computer assisted and robotic Medical interventions are becoming common clinical practices in recent years as a result of the rising trend towards more precise medical procedures especially in surgery and rehabilitation. They are proved to provide better clinical results and lower the overall costs through shorter hospital stays, shorter recovery times, reduced need for repeated surgeries and availability of home based therapy. The domain of applications has now been extended to the full spectrum of the medical treatment, from diagnosis to preoperative planning, surgery execution, and postoperative rehabilitation. The products are thus rather diverse, ranging from modeling and visualization software tools to surgical simulator units, navigation systems, surgical robots, and robotic rehabilitation apparatuses. The discipline inherently involves the integration of many different computer-related technologies. Modern medical imaging systems, such as CT, MR, PET, together with advanced techniques of image analyzing and modeling, 3D anatomy visualization, real-time tracking and sensing, haptics and robotics are considered to be the key underlying technologies. Considering the wide range of technologies, products and applications, a number of different names have been attributed to the discipline, e.g., image-guided surgery, computer-assisted surgery, medical robotics, medical virtual reality, computer-integrated surgery.
We prefer the term “Biomedical Technology and Robotics” as it emphasizes on the underlying technologies more comprehensively and includes all the tools and technologies developed for a range of applications as wide as the medical science. The science spans a wide spectrum of fields and techniques such as image processing, 3D object modeling, computer aided design, localization and image guided navigation, motion simulation & planning, man-machine-interfacing, control and finally design and analysis of mechanisms. Each of the above branches of this science has found exciting applications in the medical sciences and referred to as Biomedical Technology and Robotics. Our group started its activities since 2003 and now at RCBTR we have Image-guided Surgery Group (IGSG), Medical Robotics Group (MDG), Medical Informatics Group (MIG) and Bio-Medical Systems & Equipments Group (BMSEG). Also our center include dummy and Robotic surgery operating room, research laboratories and R&D rooms, Rapid prototyping workshop, Electronic workshop and light and heavy Mechanical workshops. At IGSG, we specially focus on medical procedures that use computer-based systems to provide surgeons precisely visualize and localize surgical tools. The main goal of this group is as follows:

Developing methods to localize surgery tools more accurately based on the integration of pre/intra operative images.
Developing advance analysis and visualization techniques for medical images & videos
Implementing state of the art methods for analyzing medical images including, segmentation, registration and modeling of medical images
Using creative technologies of virtual reality concept in surgery disciplines
Developing robotics interfaces for image guided surgery disciplines