LCSR Seminar: Pierre Dupont

Description

Pierre E. Dupont, chief of pediatric cardiac bioengineering at Boston Children's Hospital and a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, will be giving a talk entitled "Designing Medical Robots Inside a Hospital" for the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics.

Abstract:

My lab creates medical robots not only for minimally invasive surgery but also for tissue regeneration. This talk will describe two of our technologies. The first consists of a class of robot implants designed to apply traction forces over a period of weeks inside the body so as to induce the regeneration of soft tissues. Applications include lengthening the esophagus and bowel for the treatment of congenital defects and disease. The second technology is a type of continuum robot that is based on concentrically combining pre-curved elastic tubes. We are using this technology to create multi-armed systems for intracranial endoscopic surgery. We are also developing image-guided catheters that can navigate autonomously inside the blood-filled beating heart.