Multi-Scale Medical Robotics Center

Reshaping the Future of Medical Diagnosis and Treatment with Robotic Technologies

With the advancement of AI, imaging and robotics technologies, novel robotic-assisted surgical procedures and therapeutic methods are transforming medical diagnosis and treatment solutions. Such technologies enhance the visualization, accessibility, and accuracy for the surgeons to carry out minimally invasive surgeries that are more accessible to patients worldwide.

The Multi-Scale Medical Robotics Center brings the worlds of medicine and robotics together, focusing on technological innovation with a strong emphasis on clinical translation and direct patient benefits. The Center serves as a synergistic platform for clinicians, engineers and researchers from local and overseas universities, including ETH Zurich, Imperial College London and Johns Hopkins University, to work together and forge new ways to translate biomedical engineering research innovations into medical practices.

MRC principal investigators and advisors from faculty of medicine and faculty of engineering to enable transdisciplinary medical robotics research and development.

Local clinicians, professors, investigators, engineers, research project teams, business and administration teams of MRC are in collaboration with three top-notch overseas institutions to develop effective and accessible imaging and robotic technologies.

The Hybrid Operating Room of MRC Lab equipped with MRI and Robotic-Assisted C-Arm X-Ray Imaging System (Artis Zeego) machines is fully dedicated to R&D and pre-clinical evaluations of new surgical robots and medical devices via live animal and cadaveric studies.

The Multi-Scale Medical Robotics Center will support three research programmes:

• Endoluminal multi-scale robotic platforms for diagnostics and therapeutics, to develop a robotic endoscopic platform for advanced endoluminal surgery, a flexible endoluminal soft robot for gastrointestinal cancer treatment and a magnetic anchored and guided endoscope (MAGS) for single incision surgery.
• Magnetic-guided endoluminal robotic platform, to focus on magnetic-guided endoscope for complete small bowel examinations and the treatment of small bowel diseases, micro-/nanorobotics and clinical applications and magnetic-guided soft tethered capsule endoscopy for upper/lower gastrointestinal diagnostics.
• Image-guided robotic interventions to develop image-based automation in robotic surgery, high performance robotic systems for intra-operative MRI-guided interventions, image-guided robotic platform for minimally invasive orthopaedic surgery and a modular surgical robotic system for hybrid surgery.

In the long run, the Center will serve as a medical robotics incubation hub to foster medical technology start-ups, provide training in the areas of fully-integrated approaches and use of robotic technologies, pre-clinical design and intraoperative use of medical robots.