24 September 1998

Carnegie Mellon Partners with Johns Hopkins and MIT In NSF Center to Foster Robotic and Computer-Aided Surgery

Experts in medical robotics at Carnegie Mellon University will partner with colleagues from the Johns Hopkins University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a new Engineering Research Center (ERC) in Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology, which is being established at Johns Hopkins with a renewable, five-year, $12.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

The university researchers will also be working with doctors at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Shadyside Hospital in Pittsburgh and Hopkins' own medical school.

In addition to the NSF funding, the universities and hospitals involved will contribute another $8.1 million to the ERC over the first five years of its operation. And industry donors have pledged another $1.75 million.

The center's director is Johns Hopkins computer scientist Russell H. Taylor, who will collaborate with Takeo Kanade of Carnegie Mellon and Eric Grimson of MIT. Kanade is director of Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. His expertise lies in applications of vision and other sensing techniques to medical robotics. Grimson, also a computer vision specialist, has developed image-guided technology for brain surgery.

Robotics Institute researchers have been working in the field of medicine since 1993, when Kanade and Dr. Anthony DiGioia, an orthopedic surgeon at Shadyside Hospital, co-established the Center for Medical Robotics and Computer-Assisted Surgery. Since then, researchers from both institutions have shared in the development of HipNav, a computer-aided system for hip replacement surgery, which was proven effective in clinical trials last summer. They've also made breakthroughs in medical image processing, including the unique design of a 3D image overlay system, and in microsurgery. "Carnegie Mellon was chosen to be a partner in the new ERC because of its depth and breadth in medical robotics," Kanade said. "The Robotics Institute has the most extensive infrastructure and technology pool applicable to the medical domain, but much of it has yet to be explored. Working closely with these two leading institutions will give us an opportunity to become major contributors to the field of medical robotics. It also will give our students broader educational opportunities as the center allows for interchanges of students among Johns Hopkins, MIT and Carnegie Mellon."

More information on Carnegie Mellon's work in medical robotics can be found on the Web at http://www.mrcas.ri.cmu.edu

The ERC at Johns Hopkins joins a group of 20 others involving more than 500 companies in a wide range of fields, including bioengineering, multimedia technology and manufacturing, among others. More information about the NSF's Engineering Research Centers can be found at http://www.eng.nsf.gov/eec/erc.htm

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