Survey of Navigation Guided Robotics for Orthopedic Surgical Assistance–Concept and Components

This surveyed paper reviews the state-of-the-art of navigation guided robot systems for orthopedic surgery with emphasis on the overall system architecture, since appropriate components adoption and integration is necessary to guarantee overall system performance. The main components with respect of concept and technologies are identified after review of related work that focus on these fields. Based on this a definition of robotics system for orthopedic due to its increasing importance is given, to distinguish tele-manipulator system dominated in soft tissue surgical fields. Also, system registration is discussed in more details due to its core role in components integration, including multi-modality image registration, image to patient registration and robotics arm to navigation registration. With fact that rapid progress in both research and commercial system, there are potential challenges to be faced in the next decades. Those challenges and suggestion in research directions to meet the higher expectation to the surgeon in the operation theater is finally provided.