Robot assisted laser bone processing: Marking and cutting experiments

Processing bony tissue using robot assisted laser ablation is a promising new method, which facilitates to manipulate bone in mum range. Developing the first setup for robot assisted laser processing of bone necessitates on the one hand suitable planning and simulation techniques. Especially planning of the ablation pattern, i.e. the placement of single laser pulses is a crucial step. On the other hand the maximal achievable accuracy performing laser cutting is in the range of the single spot size of a laser pulse. Therefore the assembly of all components and the methods applied for the execution is of high importance. We established the first setup for robot assisted laser ablation of bone. The workflow starts with the planning of the marking or cutting geometry on a surface model of the patient. Afterwards a simulation allows to verify the expected of the procedure. In order to evaluate our system we performed marking and cutting experiments, which are presented in this contribution. For the first time an osteotomy of cadaver femoral cow bone was performed using robot assisted laser ablation.