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Iulian Iordachita

44 accepted papers

2025

Real-Time Deformation-Aware Control for Autonomous Robotic Subretinal Injection Under iOCT Guidance

Demir Arikan, Peiyao Zhang, Michael Sommersperger, Shervin Dehghani, Mojtaba Esfandiari, Russell H. Taylor +4
ICRA 2025

Robotic platforms provide consistent and precise tool positioning that significantly enhances retinal microsurgery. Integrating such systems with intraoperative optical coherence tomography (iOCT) enables image-guided robotic interventions, allowing autonomous performance of advanced treatments, suc

Cited by 10Source ↗Scholar ↗
2024

Autonomous Needle Navigation in Subretinal Injections via iOCT

Peiyao Zhang, Ji Woong Kim, Peter Gehlbach, Iulian Iordachita, Marin Kobilarov
RA-L 2024

Subretinal injection is an effective method for direct delivery of therapeutic agents to treat prevalent subretinal diseases. Among the challenges for surgeons are physiological hand tremor, difficulty resolving single-micron scale depth perception, and lack of tactile feedback. The recent introduct

Cited by 9Source ↗Scholar ↗
2024

Bevel-Tip Needle Deflection Modeling, Simulation, and Validation in Multi-Layer Tissues

Yanzhou Wang, Lidia Al-Zogbi, Guanyun Liu, Jiawei Liu, Junichi Tokuda, Axel Krieger +1
ICRA 2024poster

Percutaneous needle insertions are commonly performed for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes as an effective alternative to more invasive surgical procedures. However, the outcome of needle-based approaches relies heavily on the accuracy of needle placement, which remains a challenge even with robo…

Cited by 3Source ↗Scholar ↗
2024

Colibri5: Real-Time Monocular 5-DoF Trocar Pose Tracking for Robot-Assisted Vitreoretinal Surgery

Shervin Dehghani, Michael Sommersperger, Mahdi Saleh, Alireza Alikhani, Benjamin Busam, Peter Gehlbach +3
ICRA 2024poster

Retinal surgery is a complex medical procedure that requires high precision dexterity to perform delicate instrument maneuvers with sub-millimeter accuracy. Minimizing the manual tremor and achieving precise and repeatable execution of surgical tasks has motivated the development of robotic platform…

Cited by 2Source ↗Scholar ↗
2024

Cooperative vs. Teleoperation Control of the Steady Hand Eye Robot with Adaptive Sclera Force Control: A Comparative Study

Mojtaba Esfandiari, Ji Woong Kim, Botao Zhao, Golchehr Amirkhani, Muhammad Hadi, Peter Gehlbach +2
ICRA 2024poster

A surgeon’s physiological hand tremor can significantly impact the outcome of delicate and precise retinal surgery, such as retinal vein cannulation (RVC) and epiretinal membrane peeling. Robot-assisted eye surgery technology provides ophthalmologists with advanced capabilities such as hand tremor c…

Cited by 5Source ↗Scholar ↗
2024

Exploring the Needle Tip Interaction Force with Retinal Tissue Deformation in Vitreoretinal Surgery

Simon Pannek, Shervin Dehghani, Michael Sommersperger, Peiyao Zhang, Peter Gehlbach, M. Ali Nasseri +2
ICRA 2024poster

Recent advancements in age-related macular degeneration treatments necessitate precision delivery into the subretinal space, emphasizing minimally invasive procedures targeting the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE)-Bruch’s membrane complex without causing trauma. Even for skilled surgeons, the inhere…

Cited by 3Source ↗Scholar ↗
2024

Fully Distributed Shape Sensing of a Flexible Surgical Needle Using Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry for Prostate Interventions

Jacynthe Francoeur, Dimitri Lezcano, Yernar Zhetpissov, Raman Kashyap, Iulian Iordachita, Samuel Kadoury
ICRA 2024poster

In minimally invasive procedures such as biopsies and prostate cancer brachytherapy, accurate needle placement remains challenging due to limitations in current tracking methods related to interference, reliability, resolution or image contrast. This often leads to frequent needle adjustments and re…

Cited by 1Source ↗Scholar ↗
2024

In Vivo Feasibility Study: Evaluating Autonomous Data-Driven Robotic Needle Trajectory Correction in MRI-Guided Transperineal Procedures

Mariana C. Bernardes, Pedro Moreira, Dimitri A. Lezcano, Lori Foley, Kemal Tuncali, Clare M. Tempany +4
RA-L 2024

This study addresses the targeting challenges in MRI-guided transperineal needle placement for prostate cancer (PCa) diagnosis and treatment, a procedure where accuracy is crucial for effective outcomes. We introduce a parameter-agnostic trajectory correction approach incorporating a data-driven clo

Cited by 8Source ↗Scholar ↗
2024

Towards Autonomous Retinal Microsurgery Using RGB-D Images

Ji Woong Kim, Shuwen Wei, Peiyao Zhang, Peter Gehlbach, Jin U. Kang, Iulian Iordachita +1
RA-L 2024

Retinal surgery is a challenging procedure requiring precise manipulation of the fragile retinal tissue, often at the scale of tens-of-micrometers. Its difficulty has motivated the development of robotic assistance platforms to enable precise motion, and more recently, novel sensors such as microsco

Cited by 8Source ↗Scholar ↗
2023

Automatic Alignment of Fractured Femur: Integration of Robot and Optical Tracking System

Marzieh S. Saeedi-Hosseiny, Fayez Alruwaili, Michael P. Clancy, Emily A. Corson, Sean McMillan, Charalampos Papachristou +3
RA-L 2023

This letter presents Robossis, a surgical robotic system for automated femur fracture alignment. Robossis is the integration of an optical tracking system with a 6-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) 3-armed parallel robot that satisfies the clinical and mechanical design requirements for femur alignment surg

Cited by 10Source ↗Scholar ↗
2023

Autonomous Needle Navigation in Retinal Microsurgery: Evaluation in ex vivo Porcine Eyes

Peiyao Zhang, Ji Woong Kim, Peter Gehlbach, Iulian Iordachita, Marin Kobilarov
ICRA 2023poster

Important challenges in retinal microsurgery in-clude prolonged operating time, inadequate force feedback, and poor depth perception due to a constrained top-down view of the surgery. The introduction of robot-assisted technology could potentially deal with such challenges and improve the surgeon's…

Cited by 10Source ↗Scholar ↗
2023

Flexible Needle Bending Model for Spinal Injection Procedures

Yanzhou Wang, Ka-Wai Kwok, Kevin Cleary, Russell H. Taylor, Iulian Iordachita
RA-L 2023

An <i>in situ</i> needle manipulation technique used by physicians when performing spinal injections is modeled to study its effect on needle shape and needle tip position. A mechanics-based model is proposed and solved using finite element method. A test setup is presented to mimic the needle manip

Cited by 11Source ↗Scholar ↗
2023

Method for Robotic Motion Compensation During PET Imaging of Mobile Subjects

Junxiang Wang, Iulian Iordachita, Peter Kazanzides
IROS 2023poster

Studies of the human brain during natural activities, such as locomotion, would benefit from the ability to image deep brain structures during these activities. While Positron Emission Tomography (PET) can image these structures, the bulk and weight of current scanners are not compatible with the de…

Cited by 0Source ↗Scholar ↗
2023

Robotic Navigation Autonomy for Subretinal Injection via Intelligent Real-Time Virtual iOCT Volume Slicing

Shervin Dehghani, Michael Sommersperger, Peiyao Zhang, Alejandro Martin-Gomez, Benjamin Busam, Peter Gehlbach +3
ICRA 2023poster

In the last decade, various robotic platforms have been introduced that could support delicate retinal surgeries. Concurrently, to provide semantic understanding of the surgical area, recent advances have enabled microscope-integrated intraoperative Optical Coherent Tomography (iOCT) with high-resol…

Cited by 24Source ↗Scholar ↗
2022

ColibriDoc: an Eye-in-Hand Autonomous Trocar Docking System

Shervin Dehghani, Michael Sommersperger, Junjie Yang, Mehrdad Salehi, Benjamin Busam, Kai Huang +4
ICRA 2022poster

Retinal surgery is a complex medical procedure that requires exceptional expertise and dexterity. For this purpose, several robotic platforms are currently under development to enable or improve the outcome of microsurgical tasks. Since the control of such robots is often designed for navigation ins…

Cited by 18Source ↗Scholar ↗
2021

A Robotic Platform to Navigate MRI-guided Focused Ultrasound System

Jing Dai, Zhuoliang He, Ge Fang, Xiaomei Wang, Yingqi Li, Chim Lee Cheung +4
RA-L 2021

Focused ultrasound (FUS) technology attracts increasing interests accrediting to its non-invasive and painless treatment of tumors. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) guidance has been introduced to monitor this procedure, thus allowing the ultrasound foci to be precisely controlled. However, manual p

Cited by 19Source ↗Scholar ↗
2021

An Integrated High-dexterity Cooperative Robotic Assistant for Intraocular Micromanipulation*

Makoto Jinno, Gang Li, Niravkumar A. Patel, Iulian Iordachita
ICRA 2021

Retinal surgeons are required to manipulate multiple surgical instruments in a confined intraocular space, while the instruments are constrained at the small incisions made on the sclera. Furthermore, physiological hand tremor can affect the precision of the instrument motion. The Steady-Hand Eye Ro

Cited by 3Source ↗Scholar ↗
2021

Automated Mosquito Salivary Gland Extractor for PfSPZ-based Malaria Vaccine Production

Wanze Li, Zhuohong He, Parth Vora, Yanzhou Wang, Balazs Vagvolgyi, Simon Leonard +5
ICRA 2021poster

Malaria is a worldwide scourge, and the broad deployment of an effective vaccine would improve the lives of millions of people. A vaccine based on Plasmodium falciparum (PfSPZ) sporozoites extracted from the salivary glands of infected mosquitoes shows significant promise. However, the large-scale i…

Cited by 3Source ↗Scholar ↗
2021

Spotlight-Based 3D Instrument Guidance for Autonomous Task in Robot-Assisted Retinal Surgery

Mingchuan Zhou, Jiahao Wu, Ali Ebrahimi, Niravkumar A. Patel, Yunhui Liu, Nassir Navab +4
RA-L 2021

Retinal surgery is known to be a complicated and challenging task for an ophthalmologist even for retina specialists. Image guided robot-assisted intervention is among the novel and promising solutions that may enhance human capabilities during microsurgery. In this paper, a novel method is proposed

Cited by 21Source ↗Scholar ↗
2021

Towards Safe In Situ Needle Manipulation for Robot Assisted Lumbar Injection in Interventional MRI

Yanzhou Wang, Gang Li, Ka-Wai Kwok, Kevin Cleary, Russell H. Taylor, Iulian Iordachita
IROS 2021poster

Lumbar injection is an image-guided procedure performed manually for diagnosis and treatment of lower back pain and leg pain. Previously, we have developed and verified an MR-Conditional robotic solution to assisting the needle insertion process. Drawing on our clinical experiences, a virtual remote…

Cited by 6Source ↗Scholar ↗
2020

A Fully Actuated Body-Mounted Robotic Assistant for MRI-Guided Low Back Pain Injection

Gang Li, Niravkumar A. Patel, Weiqiang Liu, Di Wu, Karun Sharma, Kevin Cleary +2
ICRA 2020poster

This paper reports the development of a fully actuated body-mounted robotic assistant for MRI-guided low back pain injection. The robot is designed with a 4-DOF needle alignment module and a 2-DOF remotely actuated needle driver module. The 6-DOF fully actuated robot can operate inside the scanner b…

Cited by 23Source ↗Scholar ↗
2020

An Optimized Tilt Mechanism for a New Steady-Hand Eye Robot

Jiahao Wu, Gang Li, Muller Urias, Niravkumar A. Patel, Yun-hui Liu, Peter Gehlbach +2
IROS 2020poster

Robot-assisted vitreoretinal surgery can filter surgeons' hand tremors and provide safe, accurate tool manipulation. In this paper, we report the design, optimization, and evaluation of a novel tilt mechanism for a new Steady-Hand Eye Robot (SHER). The new tilt mechanism features a four-bar linkage…

Cited by 12Source ↗Scholar ↗
2020

Auditory Feedback Effectiveness for Enabling Safe Sclera Force in Robot-Assisted Vitreoretinal Surgery: a Multi-User Study

Ali Ebrahimi, Marina Roizenblatt, Niravkumar Patel, Peter Gehlbach, Iulian Iordachita
IROS 2020poster

Robot-assisted retinal surgery has become increasingly prevalent in recent years in part due to the potential for robots to help surgeons improve the safety of an immensely delicate and difficult set of tasks. The integration of robots into retinal surgery has resulted in diminished surgeon percepti…

Cited by 3Source ↗Scholar ↗
2020

Autonomously Navigating a Surgical Tool Inside the Eye by Learning from Demonstration

Ji Woong Kim, Changyan He, Muller Urias, Peter Gehlbach, Gregory D. Hager, Iulian Iordachita +1
ICRA 2020poster

A fundamental challenge in retinal surgery is safely navigating a surgical tool to a desired goal position on the retinal surface while avoiding damage to surrounding tissues, a procedure that typically requires tens-of-microns accuracy. In practice, the surgeon relies on depth-estimation skills to…

Cited by 35Source ↗Scholar ↗
2020

Fully Actuated Body-Mounted Robotic System for MRI-Guided Lower Back Pain Injections: Initial Phantom and Cadaver Studies

Gang Li, Niravkumar A. Patel, Yanzhou Wang, Charles Dumoulin, Wolfgang Loew, Olivia Loparo +5
RA-L 2020

This paper reports the improved design, system integration, and initial experimental evaluation of a fully actuated body-mounted robotic system for real-time MRI-guided lower back pain injections. The 6-DOF robot is composed of a 4-DOF needle alignment module and a 2-DOF remotely actuated needle dri

Cited by 19Source ↗Scholar ↗
2020

High-Resolution Optical Fiber Shape Sensing of Continuum Robots: A Comparative Study

Frederic Monet, Shahriar Sefati, Pierre Lorre, Arthur Poiffaut, Samuel Kadoury, Mehran Armand +2
ICRA 2020poster

Flexible medical instruments, such as Continuum Dexterous Manipulators (CDM), constitute an important class of tools for minimally invasive surgery. Accurate CDM shape reconstruction during surgery is of great importance, yet a challenging task. Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors have demonstrated gr…

Cited by 46Source ↗Scholar ↗
2020

Towards Autonomous Eye Surgery by Combining Deep Imitation Learning with Optimal Control

Ji Woong Kim, Peiyao Zhang, Peter Gehlbach, Iulian Iordachita, Marin Kobilarov
CoRL 2020

During retinal microsurgery, precise manipulation of the delicate retinal tissue is required for positive surgical outcome. However, accurate manipulation and navigation of surgical tools remain difficult due to a constrained workspace and the top-down view during the surgery, which limits the surge

Cited by 0Source ↗PDF ↗Scholar ↗
2020

Towards Bimanual Vein Cannulation: Preliminary Study of a Bimanual Robotic System With a Dual Force Constraint Controller

Changyan He, Ali Ebrahimi, Emily Yang, Muller Urias, Yang Yang, Peter Gehlbach +1
ICRA 2020poster

Retinal vein cannulation is a promising approach for treating retinal vein occlusion that involves injecting medicine into the occluded vessel to dissolve the clot. The approach remains largely unexploited clinically due to surgeon limitations in detecting interaction forces between surgical tools a…

Cited by 8Source ↗Scholar ↗
2019

A Novel Semi-Autonomous Control Framework for Retina Confocal Endomicroscopy Scanning

Zhaoshuo Li, Mahya Shahbazi, Niravkumar Patel, Eimear O’ Sullivan, Haojie Zhang, Khushi Vyas +5
IROS 2019poster

In this paper, a novel semi-autonomous control framework is presented for enabling probe-based confocal laser endomicroscopy (pCLE) scan of the retinal tissue. With pCLE, retinal layers such as nerve fiber layer (NFL) and retinal ganglion cell (RGC) can be scanned and characterized in real-time for…

Cited by 1Source ↗Scholar ↗
2019

Adaptive Control of Sclera Force and Insertion Depth for Safe Robot-Assisted Retinal Surgery

Ali Ebrahimi, Niravkumar Patel, Changyan He, Peter Gehlbach, Marin Kobilarov, Iulian Iordachita
ICRA 2019poster

One of the significant challenges of moving from manual to robot-assisted retinal surgery is the loss of perception of forces applied to the sclera (sclera forces) by the surgical tools. This damping of force feedback is primarily due to the stiffness and inertia of the robot. The diminished percept…

Cited by 37Source ↗Scholar ↗
2019

Enabling Technology for Safe Robot-Assisted Retinal Surgery: Early Warning for Unsafe Scleral Force

Changyan He, Niravkumar Patel, Iulian Iordachita, Marin Kobilarov
ICRA 2019poster

Retinal microsurgery is technically demanding and requires high surgical skill with very little room for manipulation error. During surgery the tool needs to be inserted into the eyeball while maintaining constant contact with the sclera. Any unexpected manipulation could cause extreme tool-sclera c…

Cited by 14Source ↗Scholar ↗
2019

Toward Improving Patient Safety and Surgeon Comfort in a Synergic Robot-Assisted Eye Surgery: A Comparative Study

Ali Ebrahimi, Farshid Alambeigi, Ingrid E. Zimmer-Galler, Peter Gehlbach, Russell H. Taylor, Iulian Iordachita
IROS 2019poster

When robotic assistance is present into vitreoretinal surgery, the surgeon will experience reduced sensory input that is otherwise derived from the tool's interaction with the eye wall (sclera). We speculate that disconnecting the surgeon from this sensory input may increase the risk of injury to th…

Cited by 13Source ↗Scholar ↗
2018

Body-Mounted Robot for Image-Guided Percutaneous Interventions: Mechanical Design and Preliminary Accuracy Evaluation

Niravkumar A Patel, Jiawen Yan, David Levi, Reza Monfaredi, Kevin Cleary, Iulian Iordachita
IROS 2018poster

This paper presents a body-mounted, four degree-of-freedom (4-DOF) parallel mechanism robot for image-guided percutaneous interventions. The design of the robot is optimized to be light weight and compact such that it could be mounted to the patient body. It has a modular design that can be adopted…

Cited by 29Source ↗Scholar ↗
2018

FBG-Based Control of a Continuum Manipulator Interacting with Obstacles

Shahriar Sefati, Ryan J. Murphy, Farshid Alambeigi, Michael Pozin, Iulian Iordachita, Russell H. Taylor +1
IROS 2018poster

Tracking and controlling the shape of continuum dexterous manipulators (CDM) in constraint environments is a challenging task. The imposed constraints and interaction with unknown obstacles may conform the CDM's shape and therefore demands for shape sensing methods which do not rely on direct line o…

Cited by 25Source ↗Scholar ↗
2018

Preoperative Needle Insertion Path Planning for Minimizing Deflection in Multilayered Tissues

Ryosuke Tsumura, Jin Seob Kim, Hiroyasu Iwata, Iulian Iordachita
RA-L 2018

Fine needle deflection is a problem encountered during insertion into a soft tissue. Although an axial rotational insertion is an effective approach for minimizing this problem, needle deflection still depends on the insertion angle with respect to the tissue boundary. Since the human body consists

Cited by 28Source ↗Scholar ↗
2017

A Curved-Drilling Approach in Core Decompression of the Femoral Head Osteonecrosis Using a Continuum Manipulator

Farshid Alambeigi, Yu Wang, Shahriar Sefati, Cong Gao, Ryan J. Murphy, Iulian Iordachita +3
RA-L 2017

In conventional core decompression of osteonecrosis, surgeons cannot successfully reach the whole area of the femoral head due to rigidity of the instruments currently used. To address this issue, we present design and fabrication of a novel steerable drill using a continuum dexterous manipulator (C

Cited by 72Source ↗Scholar ↗
2017

Intraocular snake integrated with the steady-hand eye robot for assisted retinal microsurgery

Jingzhou Song, Berk Gonenc, Jiangzhen Guo, Iulian Iordachita
ICRA 2017poster

Due to the confined intraocular space and physical constraints in tool manipulation, snake-like robots have a significant potential for use in retinal microsurgery. By enhancing the dexterity at the tool tip, not only the operable space on the retina can be enlarged, but also the delicate target tis…

Cited by 29Source ↗Scholar ↗
2017

Shape determination during needle insertion With curvature measurements

Jin Seob Kim, Jiangzhen Guo, Maria Chatrasingh, Sungmin Kim, Iulian Iordachita
IROS 2017poster

The determination of a flexible needle shape during the insertion is an important issue in minimally invasive surgery techniques. This is especially critical when considering conventional surgery procedures where a surgeon usually determines how to proceed needle insertion further based on the curre…

Cited by 22Source ↗Scholar ↗
2016

Design and characterization of a debriding tool in robot-assisted treatment of osteolysis

Farshid Alambeigi, Shahriar Sefati, Ryan J. Murphy, Iulian Iordachita, Mehran Armand
ICRA 2016

This paper focuses on the design and quantitative characterization of a debriding tool integrated with a robotic system to treat osteolysis (bone degradation). Osteolysis typically occurs due to wear of the polyethylene liner of the acetabular implant after total hip replacement surgery. In less inv

Cited by 30Source ↗Scholar ↗
2016

Progress toward robotic surgery of the lateral skull base: Integration of a dexterous continuum manipulator and flexible ring curette

Anzhu Gao, John P. Carey, Ryan J. Murphy, Iulian Iordachita, Russell H. Taylor, Mehran Armand
ICRA 2016

Lesions of the lateral skull base in the petrous apex present unique surgical challenges because of the proximity of critical structures, including the inner ear, carotid artery, jugular bulb, facial nerve, lower cranial nerves, dura and brain. Currently, there are few appropriate surgical devices t

Cited by 19Source ↗Scholar ↗
2015

Effects of micro-vibratory modulation during robot-assisted membrane peeling

Berk Gonenc, Peter Gehlbach, Russell H. Taylor, Iulian Iordachita
IROS 2015poster

In retinal microsurgery, membrane peeling is a standard procedure requiring the delamination of a thin fibrous membrane adherent to the retina surface by applying very small forces. Robotic devices with combined force-sensing instruments have significant potential to assist this procedure by facilit…

Cited by 11Source ↗Scholar ↗
2015

IRIS: Integrated Robotic Intraocular Snake

Xingchi He, Vincent van Geirt, Peter Gehlbach, Russell Taylor, Iulian Iordachita
ICRA 2015poster

Retinal surgery is one of the most technically challenging surgical disciplines. Many robotic systems have been developed to enhance the surgical capabilities. However, very few of them provide the surgeon the dexterity within the patient's eye to enable more flexible, more advanced surgical procedu…

Cited by 66Source ↗Scholar ↗
2015

Large deflection shape sensing of a continuum manipulator for minimally-invasive surgery

Hao Liu, Amirhossein Farvardin, Sahba Aghajani Pedram, Iulian Iordachita, Russell H. Taylor, Mehran Armand
ICRA 2015poster

Shape sensing techniques utilizing Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) arrays can enable real-time tracking and control of dexterous continuum manipulators (DCM) used in minimally invasive surgeries. For many surgical applications, the DCM may need to operate with much larger curvatures than what current shap…

Cited by 64Source ↗Scholar ↗