Houston doctor helping develop robots for surgery in space
Dr. Ted Voloyiannis gripped the joysticks and gently moved his hands, pausing for a half second as his movements were replicated more than 250 miles away.
Robotic surgeries don’t typically have this delay, but Voloyiannis’ “patient” was on the International Space Station. So the Houston colon and rectal surgeon paused frequently as he coaxed the robot to grasp and cut a rubber band simulating human tissue.
“That was one small rubber band, but a great leap for surgery,” Voloyiannis, with Texas Oncology in Houston, said as a nod to NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong.
His fellow surgeons and engineers chuckled at the moon reference and cheered from their control center in Lincoln, Neb. This chilly day in February was one of the first times remote surgery tasks were tested in space.
The capability could be crucial as astronauts travel farther from Earth. But it also could have implications here, where Voloyiannis said roughly one-third of U.S. counties don’t have specialized surgeons within their borders. Voloyiannis envisioned a future where he could use robots to remotely assist surgeons in other parts of the country.
“Nobody ever thought, me included, that one day I would be able to do remote surgery out of this world,” he said. “That tells you how our capabilities and technology modes have progressed in medicine and surgery.”
The miniature robot was created by the University of NebraskaLincoln and Virtual Incision, a private company formed to develop the MIRA robot, which stands for Miniaturized In Vivo Robotic Assistant, according to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The space-specific version, dubbed spaceMIRA, was launched to the International Space Station on Jan. 30. The robot is about 30 inches long and weighs 2 pounds, a small size that Voloyiannis said will be crucial for fitting inside a cramped spacecraft.
SpaceMIRA has two robotic arms: the left arm was fitted with a grasper and the right arm with scissors.
Surgeons in Nebraska at Virtual Incision’s headquarters used hand controls to move the robotic arms and cameras and to cut the rubber bands. Foot pedals controlled the robot’s clutching movements, among other things.
A key part of the experiment was testing how the time lag and microgravity would affect surgeons.
For instance, they were cautioned against cutting the rubber bands into multiple pieces or hitting the robotic arms into the side of the locker housing the experiment. They didn’t want to create debris that could float around the space station.
Voloyiannis, who helped Virtual Incision develop MIRA and has completed more than 1,000 robotic-assisted surgeries in the past five years, had to move slower to adjust to the time lag between his movements and those on the space station.
He said it would be plausible to complete a surgery with a time lag of less than one second. But more advanced technologies will be needed to conduct surgery on the moon, where the time lag exceeds a second, and on Mars, where the time lag is measured in minutes.
Still, NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli emphasized the importance of remote surgery during a recent news conference. She said simple procedures on Earth, such as treating an appendicitis, may not be simple in space. Small crews might not have a medical surgeon onboard — especially a surgeon with specialties in every field.
“Those surgeries will enable us to go on these longer duration missions farther from Earth,” said Moghbeli, who was onboard the space station when the test was conducted. “So it’s a real game changer.”