Eye Surgery By Magnetically Guided Microbots Moves Toward Clinical Trials 47
Sabine Hauert writes "According to robotics researcher Simone Schürle from ETH Zurich's Multi-Scale Robotics Lab (MSRL), the OctoMag is a magnetic manipulation system that uses electromagnetic coils to wirelessly guide micro-robots for ophthalmic surgery. With this system, mobility experiments were conducted in which a micro-robot with a diameter of 285 um (about four times the width of a hair) was navigated reliably through the eye of a rabbit, demonstrating the feasibility of using this technology in surgical applications."
Ocular Oncology (Score:4, Informative)
Two words you do not want to hear together when getting a referral from a retinal specialist.
I had a tumor inside my eye. Maybe this process could have saved the vision in my eye, as opposed to the invasive radiation treatment I had to deal with instead. The radiation has basically done a number on the vision in that eye, which has degraded quite a bit since my treatment almost 3 years ago.
Keep in mind, there are other issues... when they did the biopsy, it resulted in bleeding in my eye, a shocking discovery I made after the treatment (where a radioactive plaque was sewn to my eye, under the tumor, for a week) when I would put the drops prescribed in my eye. It was unexpected, basically a dark encroaching blob that floated into my vision when my head was tilted back. I suspect injecting these into an eye would result in a similar problem. IT took several weeks to clear up (blood absorption is slow in the eye). I'm also not sure if these are up to the task of killing a 6mm tumor.