From Open, Laparoscopic, or Computerized Surgical Interventions to the Prospects of Image-Guided Involvement

This review aims to place open, laparoscopic, computerized (robotic), and image-guided robotic surgical interventions in the context of complex medical surgeries, taking into account patient well-being, staff effort, and task reliability. It deduces the specificities of each technique and subsequently focuses on image-guided interventions and their practice in staff training, preparation, and implementation of a possible autonomous intervention. These complex interventions are intended to be minimally invasive (MI), precise, and safe therapies. The accuracy of robotic positioning could be improved by reductions in complexity and uncertainty involved in the intervention procedure. These can be achieved by matching the real controlled procedure and its virtual replica. The contribution discusses considerations for staff training and/or the planning of surgical interventions using real and virtual phantoms, and the use of augmented matched digital twins (DTs) for real interventions. This paper successively approaches open, laparoscopic and robotic surgeries, image-guided robotic interventions, the control and DT monitoring of MRI-assisted interventions, MRI field ruling equations and MRI compatibility, DT monitoring involvements in surgical interventions, and it ends with a discussion and main conclusions. The different topics presented in this article, although explicit, are reinforced by examples from the literature to facilitate a deeper understanding. The outcome of this review highlights the importance of robotic imaging-assisted procedures involving MI, nonionizing, and precise interventions. It also illustrates the potential of DTs combined with digital tools to offer an effective solution for the management of these interventions. The exploitation of such a suitable digital environment allows the planning, forecasting, prospecting, training, and execution, with staff in the loop, of surgical activities in general. This methodology allows for the precise consideration of specific anatomies, particularly in microsurgery and neurosurgery.