The NeuroMate is still alive

The NeuroMate was the first neurosurgical robot on the market, but it has not been available in the past couple of years. After a major face-lift, it reappeared in Renishaw's product line, targeting stereoelectroencephalography and neuroendoscopy. The robot may further find its use in pediatrics.

An Italian group (at Università di Firenze and Università di Udine) has long been dealing with the NeuroMate. Lately, they developed a linear actuator for the robot (see image), where surgical tool is a special device for tumor lesion therapy called the Photon Radio-Surgery. The PRS is a miniaturized source of low-energy X-rays that emits radiation from the end of a probe inserted in the cranial cavity. The PRS allows the surgeon to confine the dose of radiation to the tumor lesions and avoid contact with healthy regions of the cerebral tissue.

A group at CHU Bordeaux use the NeuroMate together with fluoroscopy (with an O-arm) to perform more accurate deep brain stimulation to treat Parkinson patients.

University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio has long been using a NeuroMate for transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), where stimulation sites are selected from functional images overlaid onto anatomical MR images, and the system calculates a treatment plan and robotically positions the TMS coil following that plan.

In the mean time, the competition has arrived in the form of the all-in-one Rosa platform from MedTech.

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