About this Research Topic
Medical robots are designed to assist human doctors and facilitate medical diagnoses and treatments. With advances in both robotic technology and medical science, medical diagnosis and treatment methods have shown increasing accuracy and efficiency in clinical outcomes. However, with the use of computerized technologies and specialized tools, physicians risk losing intuitive human perception. A typical example is robotic minimally invasive surgery (MIS), in which the human physician is physically isolated from the patient and far from the environment in which the surgery is performed. In this case, an endoscope is used to provide the surgeon with enhanced and high-resolution surveillance images or/and videos for in vivo visual perception. Force and tactile feedback generated by the joystick of the control console provides the surgeon with accurate and scaled haptic perception rather than directly touching the soft tissue. This replaces some of the human perception with machine perception, such as visual and haptic.
The rapid development in medical robotics has shown that machine perception is becoming more powerful due to new sensors and artificial intelligence techniques. In this Research Topic, we would like to encourage studies that are not limited to remedying the limited human perception, but also to extend the machine perception capability to a level superior to that of humans, such as CT and MRI imaging that can see through the patient's body to detect tumors and lesions. It is believed that advanced machine perception would greatly contribute to the benefit of human doctors and patients. In addition, we hope to highlight research that apply various neural technologies in brain-computer interface and human-computer interaction to enhance the perception and manipulation of medical robotic systems.
The scope of the Research Topic includes, but is not limited to the following:
• Machine perception (including visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, etc.) in medical robotics
• Medical imaging (such as CT, MRI and ultrasound) to enhance physician/robot perception during surgery
• Virtual reality / augmented reality / mixed reality in medical robotics
• Brain-computer interface / human-computer interaction for medical robotics applications
• Artificial intelligence and robotics for augmented perception
The rapid development in medical robotics has shown that machine perception is becoming more powerful due to new sensors and artificial intelligence techniques. In this Research Topic, we would like to encourage studies that are not limited to remedying the limited human perception, but also to extend the machine perception capability to a level superior to that of humans, such as CT and MRI imaging that can see through the patient's body to detect tumors and lesions. It is believed that advanced machine perception would greatly contribute to the benefit of human doctors and patients. In addition, we hope to highlight research that apply various neural technologies in brain-computer interface and human-computer interaction to enhance the perception and manipulation of medical robotic systems.
The scope of the Research Topic includes, but is not limited to the following:
• Machine perception (including visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, etc.) in medical robotics
• Medical imaging (such as CT, MRI and ultrasound) to enhance physician/robot perception during surgery
• Virtual reality / augmented reality / mixed reality in medical robotics
• Brain-computer interface / human-computer interaction for medical robotics applications
• Artificial intelligence and robotics for augmented perception
Keywords: medical robotics, augmented perception, machine perception, medical imaging, brain-computer interface
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