Robotic devices developed at Imperial are having a positive impact on surgical procedures, say researchers.

Professor Guang-Zhong Yang, director and co-founder of the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery at Imperial College London, and Professor the Lord Ara Darzi of Denham, director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation, and consultant surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, presented their findings at the latest Imperial College Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC) seminar series event.

In a packed lecture theater, Professor Yang shared his work on developing miniaturized medical robots such as the fiber-bot. The device accesses the body through tiny cavities and looks for early signs of cancer.

Professor Yang outlines how his team is already working on a prototype for the fiber-bot, which would consist of a flexible hollow optical fiber that is controlled by a surgeon. They hope that it could ultimately enable surgeons to conduct endoluminal surgical procedures, where the robot is introduced into the body’s natural openings, such as the mouth, anus, or even through the milk duct, to detect and treat conditions such as cancers that affect the breast, throat, lungs, and gastrointestinal system.

The potential advantage of the device would be that it could travel through tiny cavities and get to hard-to-reach places and look for early signs of cancers, delivering treatments through its hollow core in a targeted and minimally invasive way. The aim is to improve patient recovery times and ultimately their quality of life.

Professor Darzi outlined how devices developed at Imperial are making a difference to how surgical procedures are carried out. For example, a device that can image the kidney and show lesions, a region in an organ, or tissue that has suffered damage through injury or disease, for the first time is now part of clinical practice.

Professor Darzi also outlined that new sensors developed at Imperial that can be placed inside a patient’s organ and measure their response to treatment will be trialed at ICHT’s hospitals. The sensors will be used on patients with rectal cancer to see how they are responding to radiotherapy. This will give clinicians a clearer picture of whether the patient’s tumor has become resistant to radiotherapy at an earlier stage so that other treatment options can be explored.