MAKOplasty enables orthopedic surgeons to treat osteoarthritic knee disease with consistent, reproducible precision. The procedure employs the MAKO Tactile Guidance System™ (TGS), an FDA-cleared, surgeon-interactive robotic arm system that controls surgeons’ movements through the use of tactile resistance technology. Computer-generated virtual surfaces guide surgeons and the robotic arm along their planned path and focus cutting on patient-specific 3D visualizations, based on pre-operative imaging. The surgeon can confidently make complex tissue-sparing and bone-conserving cuts. Any necessary adjustments can be made during the operation, and patients stand to recover faster.
MAKO Surgical Corp. used SolidWorks software to design the TGS, which uses proprietary cable-drives instead of gears to make the robotic arm extremely human-interactive, enabling very high-fidelity tactile response.
The Fort Lauderdale, Fla., MAKO Surgical Corp. used SolidWorks software to design the TGS, which uses proprietary cable-drives instead of gears to make the robotic arm extremely human interactive, enabling very high-fidelity tactile response.
“The implants and instruments benefit from SolidWorks’ rapidly improving surfacing capabilities, and the TGS design benefits from SolidWorks’ large assembly and motion simulation capabilities,” said MAKO CTO and Co-founder Rony Abovitz. “We also use SolidWorks to design the virtual volumes — the safe cutting zones, if you will — that guide the surgeon in reshaping patients’ bone surfaces prior to implanting. SolidWorks handles all of these jobs well, and the software is easy for our engineers to learn no matter what platform they’ve learned on.”
The MAKOplasty design effort has been under way since 1997, tracing its surgical navigation and medical robotics roots to a wide range of licensed and internally developed technologies, notably the MIT Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab, Northwestern University’s Lab for Intelligent Machines, and The Cleveland Clinic.
MAKO Surgical Corp.
www.makosurgical.com
SolidWorks Corp.
www.solidworks.com
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Filed Under: 3D CAD, Medical, Software
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