Dancing With Robots

Reported August 2006

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- Orthopedic injuries are among the most common reasons people visit the doctor. Whether it's pain in the knee, hip or shoulder, doctors have a difficult time making an exact diagnosis without surgery. Now a new robot could make treating an injury more precise.

From rock climbing to surfing, Ginger Stirna lives extreme sports ... and has an extreme shoulder injury. The occupational therapist says competitive swimming is to blame. "Basically I've allowed my shoulder to, kind of, become more hypermobile than it should be," she says.

Stirna knows these kinds of injuries are difficult to treat. Even the best orthopedic surgeons can't be sure what the problem is until surgery gives an inside look.

"We can be surprised, which -- it's not good to have a surgeon surprised," Thomas Wright, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Florida in Gainesville, tells Ivanhoe.

Still pictures, or X-rays, don't give enough information. The science fiction dream -- as seen with the skeletons in "Total Recall" -- is cool, but it would come with a massive dose of radiation.

Meet GatorRay. Mechanical and aerospace engineer Scott Banks, Ph.D., designed this robotic system to expose patients to less radiation and give more information than the current technology. "We say, 'Hold still. Relax your muscles,' while we have them do some kind of CT scan or MR scan, which is crazy," Banks, of the University of Florida, tells Ivanhoe.

The patient wears a patch lit with LEDs on the body part being tracked. Then, eight cameras around the room capture the LED motion 500- to 1,000-times per second. A computer tells the robotic arm how to mirror the movements. Now, GatorRay carries a camera. Soon it will carry an X-ray source, and a second robot will carry an X-ray sensor.

The bulky fluoroscope used now only allows for limited motion -- nothing natural. Developers of GatorRay believe it will actually expose patients to less radiation than current imaging systems do. Exposure to too much radiation can increase cancer risk.

GatorRay will be programmed to release X-rays only when it can tell it will get a good image.

Wright says, "Currently today our tools are pretty crude." But there's nothing crude about the system designed to give doctors a superhuman glimpse at the way our bodies work.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Scott Banks, Ph.D.
Dept. of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL
(352) 392-6109
banks@ufl.edu

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