Electrical and computer engineering department receives a donation of da Vinci Standard Surgical System from Henry Ford Health System
The Wayne State University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has received a generous donation of a da Vinci® Standard Surgical System from Henry Ford Health System. The donation was orchestrated by WSU Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Abhilash Pandya. Pandya will be the primary faculty member in charge of the unit, which will be housed in the Computer-Assisted Robot-Enhanced Systems (CARES) Lab. "The primary goals of this lab are the development of advanced surgical technologies related to image-guided surgery, sensor integration and robotics," explains Pandya.
With this donation, the CARES Lab looks forward to continued collaboration with several electrical and computer engineering and medical school faculty members to help advance this technology. A group of engineering faculty members has already been in collaboration with the Wayne State School of Medicine for more than 10 years in this area, primarily Dr. Michael Klein, a significant supporter and funder of the lab.
The da Vinci system features a 3D HD vision system for a clear and magnified view inside a patient's body. da Vinci's EndoWrist® instruments bend and rotate far greater than the human wrist. A surgeon controls the da Vinci system, which translates his or her hand movements into smaller, more precise movements of tiny instruments, allowing them to perform complex and routine procedures through a few small openings.
Pandya explains that the installation of the da Vinci system allowed his lab to join a consortium of 14 leading universities around the world that are working with da Vinci to advance surgical robots. The lab is currently waiting for the receipt of a da Vinci Research Kit (DVRK), an open hardware/software system for controlling the robot to make it operational. Pandya is currently on sabbatical at Johns Hopkins University's Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, where he is performing research using DVRK this fall. Wayne State's da Vinci program is expected to be fully functional by the winter 2015 semester.
Over the last nine years, the CARES lab has graduated 10 Ph.D. students and 11 M.S. students, and has offered research projects to more than 50 undergraduate students. Pandya believes that this system will increase the level of experiential/hands-on learning that the College of Engineering can offer its students. Currently, several undergraduate and graduate students are modeling the da Vinci system for kinematic analysis and programming a simulation system for autonomous movements. Next, they will translate this work to the hardware. In addition, Pandya has set up two ECE Robotics courses that will be enriched by the da Vinci: Introduction to Robotic Systems (undergraduate) and Medical Robotics and Systems (graduate).
As for the future, Pandya explains, "I think that the intersection between engineering and medicine/surgery is a fascinating area of research and development that offers solutions to surgical and clinical problems that will be of significant benefit to patients. Furthermore, this is an up-and-coming field with an enormous potential for advancement that will be of great value to both students and researchers at WSU."
The CARES Lab and the College of Engineering would like to express their sincere appreciation to Henry Ford Macomb Hospital and its Chief Operating Officer/Vice President Mike Cervenak for the donation of the da Vinci Surgical System. They would also like to thank Dr. Simon DiMaio, Dale Bergman and Arpit Mittal of Intuitive Surgical (the makers of the da Vinci) for helping find, transport and set up the system.
Note: A previous version of this release, published on Sept. 12th, incorrectly identified the recipient department as chemical engineering and materials science. The department that received the gift in kind is electrical and computer engineering. The publisher regrets this oversight.
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Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution of higher education offering 370 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 28,000 students. For more information about engineering at Wayne State University, visit engineering.wayne.edu.
Contact: Melissa Ellison
Voice: 313-577-3853
Email: melissa.ellison@wayne.edu