Plenary Ansari

Azadeh Ansari
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
USA

Fabrication, Actuation and Imaging of Microdrillers for Neurosurgical Applications

Despite recent advances in microsurgery and radiation oncology, malignant brain tumors continue to carry a poor prognosis to date. A major obstacle is the failure of systemic therapies to reach intracranial targets in effective concentrations, due to the blood-brain barrier (BBB).
In this talk, I will discuss some of the recent advancements in developing drilling microrobots for navigation inside a viscoelastic media and in the brain tissue. I will then present my group’s recent results on co-developing magnetic microdrillers and an actuation system that is compatible with photon counting detector CT scan for microrobotic localization and guidance.