Explore more about: Biorobotic Systems

A beating heart makes for a formidable surgical arena, but a new robotic catheter could someday equip surgeons to operate in the cardiac environment with greater ease.

A Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering research team is conducting the first phase 1 clinical trial of a magnetic, flexible endoscope that has the potential to provide a safer alternative to standard colonoscopy, particularly for individuals with inflammatory bowel disease. Source: Nashville Medical News

Navigating the labyrinthine vasculature of the brain with standard surgical instruments can be incredibly challenging, even for the steadiest of hands. But with some robotic assistance, brain surgeons could potentially operate with far greater ease.

The National Institutes of Health, through its Blueprint MedTech program, has established two incubator hubs and launched a funding solicitation in support of commercially viable, clinically focused neurotechnology solutions to diagnose and treat disorders of the nervous system.

Improvements in brain sensing technologies have allowed clinicians to perform increasingly complex surgeries and enabled researchers to map the signals of the brain that control feeling, movement, and thought.

NIBIB-funded researchers are developing an autonomous robot that can perform bowel surgery with minimal assistance from a surgeon. In preclinical models, the robot outperformed expert surgeons when compared head-to-head.

In a high-tech lab on Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus in Baltimore, engineers have been building a robot that may be able to stitch back together the broken vessels in your belly and at some point maybe your brain, no doctor needed. Source: The Baltimore Sun

Equipped with a color 3D camera, an inertial measurement sensor, and its own on-board computer, a newly improved robotic cane could offer blind and visually impaired users a new way to navigate indoors. Development of the device was co-funded by NIBIB the NEI. Source: National Eye Institute.

NIH-funded researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have demonstrated the potential of a neuromodulation approach that uses low-intensity ultrasound energy, called transcranial focused ultrasound—or tFUS.

Chase Cornelison's research at UMass Amherst explores the proliferating power of cancer cells to treat spinal cord injuries and restore function following brain damage, promising research that has earned an NIH Trailblazer Award. Source: News Medical.