CRAS 2024

The 13th edition of CRAS will take place at the University of Southern Denmark, in Odense, Denmark.

Surgical robotics is revolutionizing medical practices by enhancing precision and reducing invasiveness in surgeries. These advancements facilitate complex procedures, improve patient outcomes, and open new possibilities in autonomous surgery, expanding access to high-quality surgical care. The integration of AI and patient-specific data into robotic systems paves the way for personalized surgical experiences, while also presenting new challenges in training and ethical considerations.

In this 13th edition, communications are expected to relate advances in the following fields: Advanced Computer-Assisted Surgery Systems, Robotic Platforms and Systems for Surgical Procedures, Sensing and Imaging Technologies in Surgery, AI and Machine Learning Applications for Surgical Autonomation, Surgical Simulation and Training Tools.

Extended abstracts (2 pages) discussing new technologies for computer and robot assisted surgery are solicited.

CRAS 2024 is supported by the SDU robotics section.

The CRAS'24 proceedings can be downloaded here.

CRAS 2024 Invited Speakers

Speaker 1: Mr. Johannes Callø

Title: “The Future of MedTech & Current applications"

Speaker 2: Prof. Gastone Ciuti

Gastone Ciuti received the master’s degree (Hons.) in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Pisa (Pisa, Italy) in 2008, and the Ph.D. degree in Biorobotics (Hons.) from The BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Pisa, Italy) in 2011. He is currently Associate Professor of Bioengineering at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, leading the Healthcare Mechatronics Laboratory. He is the co-author of more than 110 international peer reviewed papers on medical robotics and the inventor of more than 15 patents. He has been Visiting Professor at the Sorbonne University (Paris, France) and at the Beijing Institute of Technology (Beijing, China) and Visiting Student at the Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.A) and at the Imperial College London (London, U.K.). He is Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Bioengineering and Health Informatics, IEEE Transaction on Biomedical Engineering and of the IEEE Transaction on Medical Robotics and Bionics. He is Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) society and Member of the Technical Committee in BioRobotics of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS). His research interests include robot/computer-assisted platforms, such as tele-operated and autonomous magnetic-based robotic platforms for navigation, localization and tracking of smart and innovative devices in guided and targeted minimally invasive surgical and diagnostic applications, e.g. advanced capsule endoscopy.

Personal web-link: https://www.santannapisa.it/en/gastone-ciuti

Title: “Robotic endoscopy: technological breakthroughs and challenges in the gastrointestinal tract”

In this talk, Professor Gastone Ciuti will provide a comprehensive overview of the latest advancements in robotic endoscopic systems, focusing on both flexible scopes and capsule technologies. He will delve into various actuation methods and explore the capabilities of these systems in screening, diagnosis, and therapeutic applications. The presentation will cover a range of active locomotion solutions, including legged-based designs, magnetic locomotion (both permanent and electromagnetic systems), and origami-inspired soft robots. Professor Ciuti will also highlight current technological breakthroughs and address ongoing challenges in robotic endoscopy field. Finally, he will offer a forward-looking perspective on the future of endoscopic robots, emphasizing their potential for revolutionary applications in gastrointestinal procedures; this includes innovations such as capsules for microbiome analysis, which align with the principles of P4 medicine (predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory).

Speaker 3: Prof. Emiliano Votta

Emiliano Votta is Associate Professor at Politecnico di Milano (Polimi), in the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering. He received a PhD in Bioengineerting in 2006 at Polimi. During his PhD studies, he spent two semesters as visiting researcher at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (PA, USA).

Throughout his academic career, he has been a member of the Biomechanics Research Group and has been performing research mainly in the field of cardiovascular biomechanics: by hybridizing the analysis of clinical imaging with numerical modeling, continuum mechanics, and computer graphics, he has been developing computational tools to aid diagnosis, patient stratification, and procedural planning, as well as to provide intraprocedural support. His current research interests also include the development of software applications for intra-procedural guidance in neurosurgery.

His activity has always been driven by clinical needs and by the intent to fulfill them. Along this line, since 2019 and until 2023 he has been the head of the 3D and Computer Simulation Laboratory at IRCCS Policlinico San Donato, a center of excellence in cardiology, interventional cardiology, and cardiac surgery. Also, in 2019 he co-founded Artiness, a Polimi spin-off company devoted to developing mixed reality applications to support the planning of interventional cardiology and thoracic surgery procedures.

His research activity has produced almost 200 publications, including more than 80 full papers accepted or published in international peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Since 2020, he has been coordinating the EU-funded project ARTERY, aimed at developing a robotic platform to make transcatheter cardiac interventions easier to perform and safer. He is currently the local co-PI of the CAL.HUB.RIA project funded by the Italian Ministry of Health, where he runs activities to identify reliable and early predictors of adverse aortic remodeling in Marfan patients, and he is the local PI of the MERLIN project funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities, and Research, aimed at developing and validating a mixed reality application to support the planning and the execution of craniotomy procedures.

Title: “Robotizing transcatheter cardiac interventions: complex technologies can make clinical procedures simpler and safer”

In his talk, Emiliano Votta will report about the development of the ARTERY shared-autonomy robotic platform, which was designed to advance structural interventional cardiology procedure, i.e., complex transcatheter procedures aimed to implanting life-saving devices in the beating heart. The ultimate goal of the platform is to make these procedures X-ray free, and hence safer for clinicians and patients, and easier to perform and to learn.

He will showcase the different technological solutions that were developed ad hoc and integrated into the platform, and he will discuss how the design of such a complex platform was driven by a conceptually simple, albeit challenging, clinical need. Also, he will emphasize how the human-robot interface was conceived to allow clinicians for an intuitive and streamlined use of the platform.

Speaker 4: Mr. Stefano Pomati

Stefano Pomati graduated as an informatic engineer at the Politecnico di Milano in 2003 and he has participated since the beginning of its history in the design and development of the Asensus Surgical's (previously TransEnterix) Senhance surgical robotic System, formerly known as ALF-X (owned by SOFAR S.p.A., before the acquisition from TransEnterix).
Expert in automation, industrial automation and robotics, as per his education and background, he then focused his attention and studies on the medical robotics field, for minimally invasive surgery in particular.

In the long and exciting journey that brought from a mock-up in a lab of the Politecnico di Milano, passing through some proof of concepts and prototypes at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission in Ispra (Varese), to the currently available on the market product, he faced a lot of various and different aspects of the project, working for the JRC, SOFAR and then TransEnterix, now Asensus. In the past years, he interfaced with the surgeons and the OR Teams, developing a deep knowledge of the medical and surgical field.

After having managed the SW Development Team and the Instruments Development Team, he focused his attention on the laparoscopic instruments integration business and strategy, and he worked to reduce the distance between R&D and the field.
That naturally brought him to move from R&D to Upstream Marketing, where, as Global Product Manager and through his deep knowledge of the System, he lead product strategy and launches, driving System adoption, and filling the gap between the field and the Company, between the surgeons and R&D.

His role in Marketing evolved to the current one (i.e. Director of Surgical Innovation). In this role, he is serving as the main conduit to ensure alignment between internal stakeholders on the business needs, strategic partnerships, and development programs that will deliver value to our customers, with an emphasis on advanced instrumentation and Digital Solutions. He is in addition exploring new opportunities and leading Asensus's Innovation Team.

With the final goal to digitize the interface between the surgeon and the patient, to improve minimally invasive surgery through a new category of care called "Performance Guided Surgery".

Title: “Asensus Surgical's vision and the Senhance robot – A journey from concept to product"

I will present Asensus Surgical and our vision, our products and (some of!) our plans.
I will then present the history of Senhance and its journey, and provide some of the challenges I faced, trying to give the audience some pieces of advice.

CRAS 2024 best papers:

Best paper and presentation:

'HAPTIGLIDER: a hybrid haptic interface with variable-friction feedback for transluminal endoscopy simulation' by

Vladimir Poliakov, Jasper Van der Auwera and Emmanuel Vander Poorten

Best paper and presentation runner-up:

'Real-Time Spatial Monitoring Using Transparently Integrated Pressure Sensors for Optimized Acoustic Coupling during Robot-Assisted HIFU Surgery' by

Silvia Buratti, Selene Tognarelli, Andrea Cafarelli, Daniele Moglia, Mariangela Filosa, Calogero Maria Oddo and Arianna Menciassi

Best poster:

'Learning surgical suturing using diffusion policy' by

Wilbert Peter Empleo and Iñigo Iturrate

Best poster runner-up:

'Analyzing Surgical Videos with an Ensemble of Multi-task Recurrent Convolutional Neural Networks' by

Bruno Miguel Gomes Oliveira, Helena R. Torres, Pedro Morais and João L. Vilaca

Important dates

Deadline for extended abstracts: ~~May 15, 2024~~ June 15, 2024
Notification of acceptance: June 30, 2024
Deadline for final Paper Submission: August 15, 2024
Deadline for early bird registration: July 31, 2024
Regular registrations deadline: September 3, 2024
Call for demos is open until: July 31, 2024

To propose a demonstration or to exhibit a product/prototype please email: ktt@mmmi.sdu.dk

Conference : September 11-13, 2024

Submission Guidelines

2 pages Extended Abstracts.
Please follow the template for your final paper. A template can be downloaded here (docx or Latex).
CRAS 2024 EasyChair Submissions through this link.
A template for poster presentation can be downloaded here (pptx or Latex).
A template for pitch presentation can be downloaded here (pptx).