Automated image-guided surgery for common and complex dental implants.

Dental implantation is now recognized as a standard of care for replacing missing teeth. Pre-operative planning with patient-specific images provides the basis for precise surgery, but such accuracy is hampered to some degree because of the manual drilling procedures performed by the surgeon. In this paper, a robotic system for automated site preparation for dental implants is presented in order to provide high accuracy drilling. The results of some experiments are given to validate the system. Additionally, results are shown for jaw surgery that utilize natural-root-formed implants which can contain multiple roots. This more complex type of implant is impossible to drill manually but can provide better long-term stability and success. With this robotic system, controlled and accurate drilling was achieved, which made more advanced implant designs possible.