Non-Rigid Motion Compensation with Skin Deformation Prediction for in Situ Bioprinting
Lénaïc Cuau, Philippe Poignet, Nabil Zemiti
AI summary
Problem
Existing in situ bioprinting platforms lack real-time compensation for non-rigid patient motion, risking safety and wound coverage. Current methods fail to simultaneously control tool distance, orientation, and position on deforming surfaces.
Approach
The system uses an RGB-D camera to predict skin deformation via a Thin Plate Spline model and Kalman filtering, while a laser telemeter regulates layer height and visual servoing maintains perpendicular nozzle orientation.
Key results
- Wound coverage error under 1%
- 73% improvement in deforming path following
- Layer height control error below 0.1 mm
- Real-time orientation tracking with mean error under 4°
Why it matters
Enables safer, more precise robotic skin deposition for burn reconstruction and other clinical applications where patient motion is unavoidable.
Abstract
This letter introduces a novel method of non-rigid motion compensation for in situ bioprinting. Most bioprinting plat- forms use open-loop systems, but it raises concerns about patient safety and suboptimal wound coverage in case of patient motion. To handle these issues, our method integrates an RGB-D camera to manage orientation and to predict deformations, along with a laser telemeter to regulate deposited material thickness. The proposed approach has been evaluated on a moving silicone platform that deforms at 0.8 Hz with a 4 mm in-plane amplitude and a 20 mm elevation amplitude. Our method resulted in a wound coverage error of less than 1%. Comparative analysis demonstrates a 73.0% enhancement in deforming path following compared to existing methods. Additionally, by predicting surface motion, the method enables more precise control of layer height, with an error inferior to 0.1mm.