With help from a $3.7 million grant from the National Cancer Institute, researchers at Case Western Reserve University and Vanderbilt University are developing an incisionless prostate surgery method that combines robotics and low-field MR technology.

Their work focuses on adapting a robot from Virtuoso Surgical Inc., a startup founded by Robert Webster, professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt and one of the lead researchers, to perform targeted removal of prostate cancer lesions. The robot will be integrated with Promaxo Inc.’s low-field MR scanner, which will provide imaging of the prostate without obstructing surgical access (an improvement over traditional transrectal ultrasound).

“Our goal is to eliminate the many complications associated with whole-gland prostate removal to treat prostate cancer,” said William Grissom, Medtronic Professor of Biomedical Discovery and Innovation at Case Western Reserve, and the other lead researcher on the project. “Targeted removal of localized prostate lesions could alleviate these complications but is challenging because cancerous tissue can appear identical to healthy tissue in endoscopic images, making accurate surgery difficult.”

The Promaxo MR system, which received FDA clearance in 2021, is a "single-sided" MR solution intended for urologists and interventional/urologic radiologists to perform surgical localization of prostatic lesions in an office or outpatient surgical setting. The scanner has a limited fringe field and can be installed with no shielding or facility upgrades.

“The new robot will be able to carefully guide surgical instruments directly to prostate cancer lesions identified in high-field MR images," said Webster. "This will enable surgeons to focus treatment on specific cancerous lesions.”