PROJECT SYNOPSIS
Digestive tract cancers make up a significant proportion of malignant diseases. Interventions are often carried out during the latter stages of development, leading to low patient survival rates and poor quality of life. Among these, colorectal cancer (CRC) remains a killer as people tend to avoid colonoscopy screening programs that are often perceived as painful and uncomfortable. Effective methods to treat dysplastic polyps in the colon are limited and current approaches are often associated with unsafe oncological margins and high complication rates, often requiring life-changing surgery. TI-RED will usher in a new era for screening colonoscopy, advancing the frontiers of robotic surgery and medical imaging research. A miniaturized surgical robot will be created to be fixed at the tip of a small endoscope so that it can extend deep into hollow spaces whilst perceiving the environment through multimodal imaging and sensing. With these capabilities, the system will be able to offer: a. real-time tissue characterisation through AI-assisted multi-spectral imaging and ultrasound; b. the effective removal of polyps using a ‘miniature operating chamber’ equipped with microsurgical tools c. supervised automatic polyp dissection by deep learning methods for object recognition and segmentation. TI-RED will advance science in the fields of microsurgical robotics, focusing on the unmet clinical needs of a socially relevant disease: colorectal cancer (CRC). TI-RED will push the boundaries of minimally invasive robotic surgery beyond the state-of-the-art, solutions to perceiving and interacting with the environment for robots while operating within otherwise inaccessible spaces. TI-RED aims to obviate the need for major surgery and reduce mortality rates. The synergy and added value evident in this team and in the partners will lead to breakthroughs. TI-RED will revolutionise CRC treatment, positively impacting the quality of life for about 2 million individuals/year worldwide.
Digestive tract cancers make up a significant proportion of malignant diseases. Interventions are often carried out during the latter stages of development, leading to low patient survival rates and poor quality of life. Among these, colorectal cancer (CRC) remains a killer as people tend to avoid colonoscopy screening programs that are often perceived as painful and uncomfortable. Effective methods to treat dysplastic polyps in the colon are limited and current approaches are often associated with unsafe oncological margins and high complication rates, often requiring life-changing surgery. TI-RED will usher in a new era for screening colonoscopy, advancing the frontiers of robotic surgery and medical imaging research. A miniaturized surgical robot will be created to be fixed at the tip of a small endoscope so that it can extend deep into hollow spaces whilst perceiving the environment through multimodal imaging and sensing. With these capabilities, the system will be able to offer: a. real-time tissue characterisation through AI-assisted multi-spectral imaging and ultrasound; b. the effective removal of polyps using a ‘miniature operating chamber’ equipped with microsurgical tools c. supervised automatic polyp dissection by deep learning methods for object recognition and segmentation. TI-RED will advance science in the fields of microsurgical robotics, focusing on the unmet clinical needs of a socially relevant disease: colorectal cancer (CRC). TI-RED will push the boundaries of minimally invasive robotic surgery beyond the state-of-the-art, solutions to perceiving and interacting with the environment for robots while operating within otherwise inaccessible spaces. TI-RED aims to obviate the need for major surgery and reduce mortality rates. The synergy and added value evident in this team and in the partners will lead to breakthroughs. TI-RED will revolutionise CRC treatment, positively impacting the quality of life for about 2 million individuals/year worldwide.
