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MERIT: Researching Medical Robotics
Imagine if surgeons could rely on new tools to minimize invasive
medical procedures, reduce medical errors and help to improve how
patients recover. Medical and technological advances are bringing
us closer to such tools, and Carnegie Mellon is just the place for
this discovery.
Carnegie Mellon has announced the formation of a new Medical
Robotics and Information Technology Center (MERIT) that will
focus on creating new robotic technologies to benefit the healthcare
industry.
The interdisciplinary center will merge Carnegie Mellon's strengths
in robotics, computer science, information technology and engineering
to create computer-based tools to assist surgeons.
Principal investigators of the MERIT Center are:
• Dr. Anthony DiGioia, orthopedic
surgeon and Carnegie Mellon alumnus (Engineering 1979, Engineering
1982)
• Takeo Kanade, the U.A. and Helen
Whitaker university professor of computer science and robotics
• Ken Gabriel, professor of electrical
and computer engineering and robotics.
“Medical robotics combines what humans do well with what
machines do well,” said DiGioia, who earned his bachelor's
and master's degrees in civil and environmental engineering at
Carnegie Mellon. “The new center will help us to create the
medical toolbox of the future.”
DiGioia and Kanade led a team of researchers to develop HipNav,
a computer-aided system that helps surgeons place implants during
hip replacement surgery.
Gabriel, who specializes in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)
technologies, said the new center is a “partnership between
medicine and technology.”
In the MEMS Lab,
co-directors Gabriel and Gary Fedder, associate professor of electrical
and computer engineering, are leading a team of researchers who
are developing miniature high-performance sensors and controls that
help information systems sense, act and compute.
The MERIT Center broadens the university's involvement in medical
robotics, which began in 1993 when the Robotics
Institute formed the Center
for Medical Robotics and Computer-Assisted Surgery. In 1998,
Carnegie Mellon researchers joined the National
Science Foundation's Engineering Research Center in Computer-Integrated
Surgical Systems and Technology. Kanade is an associate director
of the center.
Reprinted with kind permission from Lisa Kulick,
Carnegie Mellon associate director of public relations - Web development
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