Robot bed with KUKA components
Particle therapy is of particular relevance in brain or spinal cord tumor cases, as surgical procedures are complicated and entail a high degree of risk.
BEC has integrated robotic components to create their robot bed. The robot in question is a ceiling-mounted kinematic system from KUKA. Using this solution, an x-ray imaging system from the company medPhoton can be installed directly on the patient’s bed and move along the bed in a linear fashion. In this way, the imaging system moves with the patient, thereby increasing the geometric precision still further.
At the same time, a camera follows special patterns on the underside of the patient’s bed, enabling the position of the bed to be adjusted with submillimeter precision, despite elasticities. As a result, the geometric chain of errors between the tumor, imaging system and radiation beam can be reduced significantly, thus increasing the precision of the therapy.