Augmenting the Reach: Visualizing Robotic Working Volume at the Tool Tip for Intuitive Retinal Access in Eye Surgery

Abstract

Retinal Surgery Robotics is a rapidly emerging field that offers enhanced precision by overcoming human tremors. A key trend of these robotic designs is toward more compact and lightweight structures for improved positioning accuracy and precise force delivery. However, this compactness sacrifices the robot's working volume, making it difficult for ophthalmic surgeons to intuitively assess if retinal targets are accessible by the surgical tool tip. This paper proposes a methodology for visualizing the actual accessible area in the microscopic view to provide surgeons with an intuitive visual guide of the tool's reach, reducing uncertainty and streamlining extraocular robotic maneuvers. We validated this method on a commercial phantom with a surgical robot system, achieving <=1.0 deg error for 83.3% of tested points across four retinal subareas and demonstrating its clinical potential.