Pilot study of a surgical robot system for zygomatic implant placement

Zygomatic implant technology has been regarded as an alternative treatment to massive grafting surgery in the severe atrophic maxillary. Nowadays, the assistant method with a real-time surgical navigation has been applied to reduce the risks of zygomatic implant placement. However, the accuracy of the complex operation is highly dependent on the experience of the surgeon. In order to avoid disadvantages of traditional surgical navigation systems, a novel surgical robot system for the zygomatic implant placement has been designed and developed. Firstly, the drilling trajectory of the zygomatic implant placement is designed through the pre-operative planning system. Secondly, the real-time positions of the surgical instruments are constantly updated with the guidance of the optical tracker. Finally, through a coordinate transformation algorithm, the drilling performance can be conducted with the control of a six degree of freedom robot. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the robot, phantom experiments had been carried out. The angle, entry point and exit point deviation of the robotic system are 1.52 ± 0.58°, 0.79 ± 0.19 mm, and 1.49 ± 0.48 mm, respectively. Meanwhile, a comparison between the robotic and manual operation demonstrates that the use of the surgical robot system for the zygomatic implant placement can improve the accuracy of the operation.