EURON'06 WINTER SCHOOL - Telesurgery

Date: 26-31 March 2006
Venue: MIGUEL HERNÁNDEZ UNIVERSITY                             
Benidorm
Spain
Contact person: Dr. José M. Azorín    jm.azorin@umh.es
Website : http://isa.umh.es/vr2/euron06/index.html

Scope

Tele-operation is a multidisciplinary technology that appeared fifty years ago by the requirements of the nuclear industry. Since its apparition, tele-operation has been applied in many areas: space, underwater,... In last years, a increasing interest has existed in the scientific community for applied teleoperation systems into medical surgery, then appearing a new research area named telesurgery. Telesurgery allows surgeons to perform remote surgical operations using robots and haptic interfaces. The key objective of this medical robotic technique is to develop “a partnership between man (the surgeon) and machine (the robot) that seeks to exploit the capabilities of both to do a task better than either can do alone”. The benefits of developing this technology could be very important for the society. However, there are technical aspects very complex that must be successfully solved to achieve that the telesurgery becomes a reality.

This Winter School is primarily addressed to young researchers (PhD and advanced Master students) interested on Telesurgery and their underlying techniques. The participants will get in touch with other young researchers in the field and have the opportunity to improve their knowledge through the tutorials given by experts.

The main goal is that participants improve their knowledge about telesurgery systems. The lectures will be organized in three parts:

• Telerobotics fundaments (1 day): robotic telemanipulation, control systems in teleoperation, haptics, slave robots;
• Telesurgery concepts (2 days): telesurgery systems, surgery simulation, visual and force sensing in telesurgery, human machine interaction in telesurgery;
• Applications (2 days): minirobots in telesurgery, orthopaedic telesurgery, neurosurgery and telesurgery.

Students will be exposed to the latest technologies in telesurgery, and will closely interact for one week with some of the top-level researchers in the world in this domain. They will also have the opportunity to discuss their research work with these researchers, as well as with other European students