AcuSurgical – ready, set, go!

credits: AcuSurgical official website

AcuSurgical, a startup developing a robotic assistant for vitreo-retinal surgery, announces a Series A funding of around 6€ million euros. The round was led by institutional investors Merieux Partners and Supernova Invest, with participations from IRDI-Soridec and Sofimac Innovation. The round aims to finance upcoming clinical trials and CE mark certification.

AcuSurgical designs and builds a robotic surgical assistant dedicated to the treatment of retinal diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD) affecting over 300 million patients worldwide including one in three Europeans aged over 70. AcuSurgical’s mission is to improve the precision and safety of current retinal procedures, augmenting the surgeons abilities and thus enabling new retinal surgeries. The aim is to treat the significative percentage of patients who today suffer from limited treatment options.

The innovative and unique robot was designed in collaboration with the LIRMM robotics laboratory, a joint research unit of the University of Montpellier and the CNRS (France) and vitreo-retinal surgeons at the Jean Monnet University in Saint-Etienne (France). The company recently signed a partnership with the Adolphe de Rothschild Foundation based in Paris.

“Our ambition is to enable innovative treatments for retinal disease that will open new perspectives for the numerous patients who today are impacted by these debilitating retinal conditions and who currently have limited options for treatment. We’re proud of the confidence afforded to us by this strong group of investors. Their support will allow us to grow the team and reach key milestones towards certification and commercialisation of our innovative surgical robotics platform” says Christoph Spuhler, CEO and co-founder of AcuSurgical.

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AcuSurgical was co-founded in 2020 by Christoph Spuhler, robotics professors Philippe Poignet and Yassine Haddab and vitreo-retinal surgeons and professors Philippe Gain and Gilles Thuret. The team is comprised of experts with significant previous experience in surgical robotics and ophthalmic medical devices. The company grew out of a collaboration between the co-founders and the LIRMM robotics laboratory accompanied by seed funding from the AxLR incubator. SATT AxLR specializes in the maturation and commercialization of innovative projects resulting from academic research. The company has been incubated at the BIC since 2018, and has received i-site MUSE support.

9th Summer School on Surgical Robotics

The registration for the 9th Summer School on Surgical Robotics (SSSR-2019) is now open (registration deadline: July 26th, 2019).

The School will be held in Montpellier, France, from 23th to 28th September 2019, and is open to Master students, PhD students, Post-docs and participants from industry.

All information can be found on the official website: http://www.lirmm.fr/sssr-2019/

Robotics enables surgery to be less invasive and/or to enhance the performance of the surgeon. In minimally invasive surgery (MIS) for instance, robotics can improve the dexterity of conventional instruments, which is restricted by the insertion ports, by adding intra-cavity degrees of freedom. It can also provide the surgeon with augmented visual and haptic inputs. In open surgery, robotics makes it possible to use in real time pre-operative and per-operative image data to improve precision and reproducibility when cutting, drilling, milling bones, to locate accurately and remove tumours. In both cases, as in other surgical specialities, robotics allows the surgeon to perform more precise, reproducible and dextrous motion. It is also a promising solution to minimize fatigue and to restrict exposition to radiation. For the patient, robotics surgery may result in lower risk, pain and discomfort, as well as a shorter recovery time. These benefits explain the increasing research efforts made all over the world since the early 90’s.

Surgical robotics requires great skills in many engineering fields as the integration of robots in the operating room is technically difficult. It induces new problems such as safety, man-machine cooperation, real time sensing and processing, mechanical design, force and vision-based control. However, it is very promising as a mean to improve conventional surgical procedures, for example in neurosurgery and orthopaedics, as well as to provide innovation in micro-surgery, image-guided therapy, MIS and Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES).

The highly interdisciplinary nature of surgical robotics requires close cooperation between medical staff and researchers in mechanics, computer sciences, control and electrical engineering. This cooperation has resulted in many prototypes for a wide variety of surgical procedures. A few robotics systems are yet available on a commercial basis and have entered the operating room namely in neurosurgery, orthopaedics and MIS.

Depending on the application, surgical robotics gets more or less deeply into the following fields:

• multi-modal information processing;
• modelling of rigid and deformable anatomical parts;
• pre-surgical planning and simulation of robotic surgery;
• design and control of guiding systems for assistance of the surgeon gesture.

During the Summer school, these fields will be addressed by surgeons and researchers working in leading hospitals and labs. They will be completed by engineers who will give insight into practical integration problems. The courses are addressed to PhD students, post-docs and researchers already involved in the area or interested by the new challenges of such an emerging area interconnecting technology and surgery. Basic background in mechanical, computer science, control and electrical engineering is recommended.

Voyage au cœur du genou avec Andrea Collo, concepteur d’un implant intelligent

publié dans Lexians (écrit par Delphine Lucas)

Andrea Collo a soutenu ses travaux de thèse intitulés « Study, Design and Evaluation of an Actuated Knee Implant for Postoperative Ligament Imbalance Correction » le 27 octobre dernier à Télécom Bretagne. Ses travaux de recherche ont eu lieu au département Image et traitement de l’information de Télécom Bretagne, au Latim ainsi qu’au LIRMM. Rencontre avec ce talentueux concepteur d’un implant intelligent, novateur, compact et robuste.

Delphine Lucas : Quel était le contexte lorsque vous avez débuté vos travaux de recherche ?

Andrea Collo : Tout est parti en 2006 d’une idée d’Éric Stindel, directeur du Latim, de développer une prothèse intelligente du genou. Cette sorte de prothèse active pourrait communiquer avec le chirurgien orthopédiste en envoyant des données pendant et surtout après la chirurgie. L’arthroplastie totale de genou est une chirurgie qui consiste à remplacer entièrement l’articulation du genou par le biais d’une prothèse (souvent en titane). La prothèse rétablit la géométrie naturelle du fémur et du tibia, tout en conservant leur mobilité relative. L’équilibrage ligamentaire est une phase clé de l’acte chirurgical : le praticien doit positionner les composants prothétiques tout en mettant en place des conditions de tensions appropriées au niveau du genou. La tension de ces deux ligaments garantit le bon alignement du membre inférieur pour une bonne mobilité post-opératoire. Après l’opération, le genou opéré s’adapte à la présence de la prothèse et des micro-changements peuvent se produire entre les composants prothétiques. Ces imprécisions sont incontrôlables et peuvent compromettre les conditions d’équilibre ligamentaire mises en place lors de la chirurgie. À l’heure actuelle, la seule solution à ce problème est la chirurgie de reprise. Cette dernière intervient dans environ 10% des cas de pose de prothèse totale de genou et est extrêmement coûteuse. L’idée d’Éric Stindel était donc d’éviter la chirurgie de reprise en proposant une prothèse intelligente capable de compenser toutes les conditions de déséquilibre ligamentaire.

Pouvez-vous nous expliquer simplement en quoi consistait votre projet de thèse ?

Mon projet de thèse s’est inscrit dans la continuité des travaux de recherche de Shaban Almouahed, qui a travaillé sur la détection du déséquilibre ligamentaire postopératoire. Il a conçu un modèle original de prothèse de genou qui repose sur l’utilisation de quatre capteurs de force piézoélectriques embarqués dans le composant tibial. Cet implant est à même de détecter toute condition de laxité (relâchement) ligamentaire post-opératoire. L’idée pour ma thèse était ensuite de concevoir un mécanisme miniaturisé, embarqué lui aussi dans le composant tibial, pour retendre un ligament collatéral relâché sans chirurgie et rétablir ainsi l’équilibre ligamentaire. Ce projet ambitieux est novateur et fortement pluridisciplinaire : il fait appel à des notions cliniques importantes, avec plusieurs contraintes de mécanique, d’électronique et de biocompatibilité.

Miniaturisation et robustesse des composants font-ils bon ménage ?

La difficulté était de concevoir un dispositif adapté à l’espace réduit disponible (environ 7×5 cm de plateau tibial sur seulement 5 mm d’épaisseur) sans diminuer la robustesse de la prothèse ni créer de faiblesse au niveau de l’os. Il a donc fallu miniaturiser au maximum les pièces mécaniques, micro-moteurs, capteurs, câbles, antennes… En outre, le mécanisme miniaturisé doit être capable de résister aux sollicitations importantes qui se génèrent dans le genou lors des activités de la vie quotidienne. Par exemple, lors de la marche normale, la force tibiofémorale maximale qui peut se développer dans le genou peut dépasser de trois fois le poids corporel (environ 260 kg) ; encore pire pour la descente d’escaliers (cinq fois le poids corporel) ou le mouvement de swing du golf (sept fois).
Avec les imprimantes 3D, comme celle du Fablab de l’École, il est possible de créer aisément des prototypes, mais il faut aussi traiter les nombreux verrous technologiques qui se posent, notamment celui de la miniaturisation du micro-moteur… Cela sera levé d’ici quelques années, j’en suis certain !

Techniquement, comment fonctionne le dispositif et comment le praticien va t-il l’actionner ?

Lors d’une visite de contrôle, le patient est invité à faire quelques pas afin de générer de l’énergie à l’intérieur de la prothèse. Les piézos, utilisés principalement comme capteurs de force, peuvent être exploités comme générateurs d’énergie électrique. Cette énergie alimente un système de télécommunication à distance miniaturisé embarqué dans la quille du composant tibial de la prothèse. Le traitement des données recueillies par les piézos permet de calculer la force tibiofémorale nette et son point d’application dans la prothèse ; avec ces informations, le praticien peut ensuite estimer le soulèvement latéral de la plateforme tibiale nécessaire à retendre le ligament collatéral relâché.
Le mécanisme miniaturisé embarqué dans la plateforme tibiale peut être contrôlé par radiofréquence (RFID) et alimenté par induction magnétique : cette dernière est une technique de transfert d’énergie sans contact qui repose sur l’utilisation combinée de deux bobines. On aurait donc une prothèse contrôlée et alimentée à distance sans besoin ni de câbles ni de batteries. Techniquement, le mécanisme que j’ai conçu repose sur l’utilisation combinée d’une cale (ou un coin, si cela est plus évocateur) et d’une vis sans fin. Grâce à une cale, trois fois plus fine que longue, la force de sortie est multipliée. La vis (guidée par le micro-moteur) passe à travers la cale et la fait translater latéralement dans la plateforme tibiale. Lors de sa translation, la cale glisse sous un plateau tibial mobile et le soulève latéralement comme souhaité. Et voilà, le tour est joué, il est ainsi possible de retendre un ligament collatéral relâché !

Votre recherche est ambitieuse et fait appel à des compétences pluri-disciplinaires, quel est votre parcours ?

Après une licence en génie biomédical à Gênes en Italie, j’ai poursuivi le Master Européen en Robotique Avancée (Emaro), dispensé pendant deux ans entre l’Université de Gênes et l’École Centrale de Nantes. Ensuite, ma recherche d’un sujet de thèse dans le domaine de la robotique médicale m’a conduit à trouver ce beau projet entièrement financé par l’Institut Mines-Télécom/Télécom Bretagne, dans le cadre du programme Futur & ruptures. La collaboration entre deux laboratoires français, le Latim (Laboratoire de traitement de l’information médicale) à Brest et le Lirmm (Laboratoire d’informatique, de robotique et de microélectronique) à Montpellier a été globalement positive et m’a permis d’acquérir les compétences nécessaires à l’avancement du projet. Mes encadrants pour cette thèse étaient Éric Stindel du Latim, Chafiaa Hamitouche-Djabou du département Image et traitement de l’information à Télécom Bretagne et Philippe Poignet pour le Lirmm. Un financement sur 24 mois de l’Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR projet Emerge) vient d’être acté. Cela va permettre de poursuivre mes travaux de thèse pour le développement de la première prothèse instrumentée de genou autonome en énergie et adaptative.

Quand peut-on espérer voir ce type de prothèse intelligente arriver au bloc opératoire ?

A priori, ce système novateur permettrait à des milliers de personnes d’éviter la chirurgie de reprise. Il reste encore à optimiser et à valider définitivement les choix de conception. Une phase de validation clinique est indispensable pour vérifier la fiabilité et l’efficacité du système et des expérimentations in vivo sont également nécessaires. Il faudra compter entre 10 à 15 ans avant que des patients puissent profiter de ce dispositif. Patience est mère de toutes les vertus.

1st European Computational Motor Control Summer School

-original message by Philippe Fraisse–

Dear Colleague,

It is our pleasure to announce the first European Computational Motor Control Summer School, which will take place at the Mas des Violettes, a pleasant southern French countryside setting near Montpellier, from Sunday June 15th to Saturday June 21st, 2014.

The overall organization will be a morning lecture and an afternoon Matlab-tutorial, each taught by internationally acclaimed researchers in the field:

• Monday: Introduction to human motor control and learning . Jeroen Smeets (AM) and David Franklin (PM)
• Tuesday: Neuro-mechanics. Francisco Valero-Cuevas (AM) and James Finley (PM)
• Wednesday: Motor Control. Etienne Burdet (AM) and Nathanael Jarrassé, Emmanuel Guigon (PM)
• Thursday: Lectures by PM faculty, LIRMM and M2H Euromov researchers (AM); outdoor activities (PM)
• Friday: Motor Learning. Stefan Schaal (AM) and Michael Mistry (PM)

We will also have student presentations, outdoors activities (canoe, hiking in the Garrigue…), “aperitifs”, visit of Saint Guilhem-le-Desert, wine cave visits, banquet, etc. So we expect this summer school to be instructive, fun, as well as a good networking opportunity. The long-term goal of this summer school, which is made possible in large part by a grant from the multidisciplinary large–scale NUMEV initiative in Montpellier, is to promote the field of Computational Motor Control in Europe in general, and in France in particular, as the field is not as developed as it is in the US. Other sponsors include the Division of Physical Therapy and Biokinesiology at USC, and the M2H Euromov laboratory in Montpellier.

The prime target applicants are PhD students and post-doctoral fellows, but applications from junior researchers will be considered. No knowledge of computational motor control, or motor control, is necessary to attend. However, students are expected to know Matlab and have a good level in mathematics, in particular basics in linear algebra and differential equations. Some knowledge in systems neuroscience would be preferable. Each student will need to bring his/her laptop with Matlab pre-installed. To apply for participation, please email a CV and a brief statement of purpose to Nicolas Schweighofer (please use “Summer school: your name” as title). Note that place is very limited and application is therefore likely to be competitive. The first 15 accepted students will have reduced fees of 450 Euros (others 500 Euros). This fee will cover the course, accommodation, complete full room and board, all activities, and transportation to and from downtown Montpellier (France) on Sunday 15th PM and Saturday 21st AM. The payment will have to be made by May 9th via bank transfer.

And finally, for those of you ready to relax and party after this week of intense work, Saturday 21st evening is “la Fête de la Musique” in France, and Montpellier is party-town all night long – no need for a hotel room (this is of course out of the summer school program)!

We hope to see you in June at the Mas des Violettes!

Nicolas Schweighofer
Denis Mottet
Phillipe Fraisse
David Guiraud

SURGICAL ROBOTICS – 6th Summer School

September 4-11, 2013 – MONTPELLIER, France

Robotics enables surgery to be less invasive and/or to enhance the performance of the surgeon. In minimally invasive surgery (MIS) for instance, robotics can improve the dexterity of conventional instruments, which is restricted by the insertion ports, by adding intra-cavity degrees of freedom. It can also provide the surgeon with augmented visual and haptic inputs. In open surgery, robotics makes it possible to use in real time pre-operative and per-operative image data to improve precision and reproducibility when cutting, drilling, milling bones, to locate accurately and remove tumours. In both cases, as in other surgical specialities, robotics allows the surgeon to perform more precise, reproducible and dextrous motion. It is also a promising solution to minimize his fatigue and to restrict his exposition to radiation. For the patient, robotics surgery may result in less risk, pain and discomfort, as well as a shorter recovery time. These benefits explain the increasing research efforts made all over the world since the early 90’s.

Surgical robotics requires great skills in many engineering fields as the integration of robots in the operating room is technically difficult. It induces new problems such as safety, man-machine cooperation, real time sensing and processing, mechanical design, force and vision-based control… However, it is very promising as a mean to improve conventional surgical procedures, for example in neurosurgery and orthopedics, as well as providing innovative new ones in micro-surgery, image-guided therapy, MIS and Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES).

The highly interdisciplinary nature of surgical robotics requires close cooperation between medical staff and researchers in mechanics, computer sciences, control and electrical engineering. This cooperation has resulted in many prototypes for a wide variety of surgical procedures. A few robotics systems are yet available on a commercial basis and have entered the operating room namely in neurosurgery, orthopedics and MIS.

Depending on the application, surgical robotics gets more or less deeply into the following fields: multi-modal information processing; modelling of rigid and deformable anatomical parts; pre-surgical planning and simulation of robotic surgery; design and control of guiding systems for assistance of the surgeon gesture. During the Summer school, these fields will be addressed by surgeons and researchers working in leading hospitals and labs. They will be completed by engineers who will give insight into practical integration problems.

This course is addressed to PhD students, post-docs and researchers already involved in the area or interested by the new challenges of such an emerging area interconnecting technology and surgery. Basic background in mechanical, computer science, control and electrical engineering is recommended.

Coordinated by:

• Philippe POIGNET & Nabil ZEMITI – LIRMM, CNRS – Université Montpellier 2
• Renaud GARREL – Université Montpellier 1, CHRU Montpellier, ENT Dpt

MORE INFO ON THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Chercheur en Robotique Médicale

Voici un clip-métier sur la profession de Chercheur en Robotique Médicale. La vidéo a été tournée au LIRMM en janvier dernier et est en ligne sur le site “100 métiers en Languedoc-Roussillon“, édité par l’ONISEP (Office National d’Information Sur les Enseignements et les Professions).

Reconnaissez-vous quelqu’un dans cette vidéo? 😉

what’s LIRMM ?

I spent the first year of my PhD in Brest, at the LaTIM laboratory (Télécom Bretagne). I wrote a short post about it, giving a brief description of its research topics and some contacts. Currently, I’m carrying out the second year of this project in Montpellier, in another laboratory called LIRMM. Et voilà a new post with a quick description of this lab and its robotics department 🙂

The Montpellier Laboratory of Informatics, Robotics, and Micro-electronics (LIRMM in French) is a cross-faculty research entity of the University of Montpellier 2 (UM2) and the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). LIRMM is located at the Saint-Priest campus of University of Montpellier 2 (about 5 km from the city center).

LIRMM research activities cover a broad range of topics, ranging from informatics to systems, from technology to people and applications, including:

• Design and verification of integrated, mobile and communicating systems,
• Agent-based modelling of complex systems,
• Research on algorithms, bioinformatics, human-machine interaction, robotics and more.

Work is carried out in three main scientific research departments, each of which is organized into project teams:

1. The Informatics department covers topics that range from the leading edge of modern mathematics to applied research: graph algorithms, bioinformatics, cryptography, networks, databases and information systems (data integration, data mining, coherency maintenance), software engineering (programming languages, objects, components, models), artificial intelligence (learning, constraints, knowledge representation, multi-agent systems) and human-machine interaction (natural language, visualization, Web semantics and e-learning).
   
2. The Microelectronics department carries out cutting-edge research in the fields of designing and testing integrated systems and micro-systems, with a focus on architectural aspects, modelling and methodology.
3. The Robotics department concentrates on issues related to synthesis, monitoring and management of complex dynamic systems (robots, robot/life interfaces), as well as navigation, localisation and steering of local and remote autonomous vehicles, and image analysis, coding and processing. The main research themes are the design of mechanical systems, the modeling, identification and control of robots, and perception. The department’s privileged field of application is health-related robotics applications (medical, handicaps), with activities that also include fields such as industry manufacturing and robotic exploration.

source: LIRMM official website

new e-mail address

Hi everybody!

I’ve just started the second year of my PhD thesis at LIRMM Laboratory, in Montpellier. Apparently I’m going to spend about one year and a half in this awesome place. Since 3 e-mail addresses were not enough, I have a fourth one, ‘official’ from this new lab where I’m now.

I’ve updated the Contact section of this scientific blog with my two -let’s say- ‘scientific’ e-mail addresses, the one from Télécom Bretagne and this brand new one from LIRMM. No more interest in showing the other two addresses, more ‘personal’ 🙂