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Medical Instrumentation Lab
Head: Cameron Riviere
Contact: Cameron Riviere (cam.riviere@cs.cmu.edu)

Mailing address:
Carnegie Mellon University
Robotics Institute
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Location:
NSH A406/ / A410
(412) 268 5905

Associated center: MRTC

Research in the Medical Instrumentation Laboratory aims to develop intelligent tools that improve performance in microsurgery and minimally invasive surgery while at the same time leaving the surgeon in full control of the procedure and benefiting from his expertise and dexterity. The goal is for the surgeon to notice the work he is doing, not the tool he is using. Current projects include active hand-held tools to cancel the surgeon's hand tremor during microsurgery, and novel instrumentation for minimally invasive heart surgery. A microsurgical workstation incorporating active tremor canceling and advanced intraoperative visualization techniques is also under development.

Name - Title <Email Address>
• Peter David Allen - Research Assistant <pda5@pitt.edu>
• Brian Becker - PhD Student, RI <brianbec@andrew.cmu.edu>
• [Home] Alan D. Guisewite - Webmaster/Special Proj Asst <adg@cmu.edu>
• [Home] Robert MacLachlan - Project Supervisor <ram@ri.cmu.edu>
• Davneet Minhas - PhD Student, Bio Med
• [Home] Nicholas Patronik - Postdoctoral Fellow <patronik@cmu.edu>
• [Home] Gregg Podnar - Program Manager <gwp@cmu.edu>
• Pablo Poncela Perez - Visiting Student <p_poncela@hotmail.com>
• [Home] Cameron Riviere - Associate Research Professor, RI/Bio Med <cam.riviere@cs.cmu.edu>
• Marco A Zenati - Adjunct Faculty (Adjunct) <zenatim@msx.upmc.edu>

• ASAP - non-contact 3-D surgical instrument tracking for device testing and surgeon assessment
• HeartLander - A miniature mobile robot for minimally invasive therapy on the beating heart through a single percutaneous incision.
• Joystick Filtering for Movement Disorders - Filtering of joystick input for computer users with movement disorders
• Micron: Intelligent Microsurgical Instruments - Suppression of hand tremor to improve precision in microsurgery.
• Needle Steering for Brain Surgery - We are developing high accuracy proportional steering of flexible needles for minimally invasive navigation in the brain.

• Modeling of Needle Steering via Duty-Cycled Spinning
  D. Minhas, J.A. Engh, MD, M.M. Fenske, and C. Riviere
  Proceedings of the 29th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, August, 2007, pp. 2756-2759. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [283 KB] copyrighted

• Positioning Accuracy of Neurosurgeons
  R. Sandoval Garcia, R. MacLachlan, M. Oh, and C. Riviere
  Proceedings of the 29th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, August, 2007, pp. 206-209. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [287 KB] copyrighted

• Test of Tracing Performance with an Active Handheld Micromanipulator
  D. Choi, R. Sandoval Garcia, R. MacLachlan, L. Ho, L. Lobes, and C. Riviere
  Proceedings of the 29th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, August, 2007, pp. 3638-3641. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [292 KB] copyrighted

• Toward Filtering of Athetoid Motion with Neural Networks
  J.J. Vázquez, K.C. Olds, S. Sibenaller, D. Ding, and C. Riviere
  Proceedings of the 29th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, August, 2007, pp. 1434-1436. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [99 KB] copyrighted

• Feedforward Controller With Inverse Rate-Dependent Model for Piezoelectric Actuators in Trajectory-Tracking Applications
  W. Ang, P. Khosla, and C. Riviere
  IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, Vol. 12, No. 2, April, 2007, pp. 134-142. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [368 KB] copyrighted

• Nonlinear Regression Model of a Low-g MEMS Accelerometer
  W. Ang, P. Khosla, and C. Riviere
  IEEE Sensors Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1, January, 2007, pp. 81-88. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [703 KB] copyrighted

• Optical Tracking for Performance Testing of Microsurgical Instruments
  R. MacLachlan and C. Riviere
  tech. report CMU-RI-TR-07-01, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, January, 2007. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [294 KB] copyrighted

• Percutaneous Subxiphoid Access to the Epicardium Using a Miniature Crawling Robotic Device
  T. Ota, N. Patronik, C. Riviere, and M.A. Zenati
  Innovations, Vol. 1, No. 5, October, 2006, pp. 227-231. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [660 KB] copyrighted

• Improved Traction for a Mobile Robot Traveling on the Heart
  N. Patronik, T. Ota, M.A. Zenati, and C. Riviere
  28th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), September, 2006, pp. 339 - 342. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [272 KB] copyrighted

• Toward Effective Needle Steering in Brain Tissue
  J.A. Engh, MD, G. Podnar, D. Kondziolka, and C. Riviere
  28th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS '06), August, 2006, pp. 559 - 562. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [445 KB] copyrighted