Today I read a paper titled “A Real-Time Soft Robotic Patient Positioning System for Maskless Head-and-Neck Cancer Radiotherapy: An Initial Investigation”
The abstract is:
We present an initial examination of a novel approach to accurately position a patient during head and neck intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT).
Position-based visual-servoing of a radio-transparent soft robot is used to control the flexion/extension cranial motion of a manikin head.
A Kinect RGB-D camera is used to measure head position and the error between the sensed and desired position is used to control a pneumatic system which regulates pressure within an inflatable air bladder (IAB).
Results show that the system is capable of controlling head motion to within 2mm with respect to a reference trajectory.
This establishes proof-of-concept that using multiple IABs and actuators can improve cancer treatment.