In the MED lab, our research is primarily in surgical robotics and on other devices to make surgery less invasive and more accurate. For more information (and videos!) about our research, click on the research tab above.
The MED lab is a laboratory in the Mechanical Engineering department at Vanderbilt University, and is a charter member of the Vanderbilt Initiative in Surgery and Engineering.
Prospective graduate students, please click here.
The MED lab is a place where doctors and engineers work side by side to create new lifesaving medical technologies. We design and construct devices to make interventional medicine more accurate, less invasive, and more effective. With a world-class medical center a 5-minute walk from the lab, we are often in operating rooms observing surgical procedures and conducting experiments with the devices we build. We also patent our work, which enables us to transfer it to commercial products, amplifying its real-world impact. Our lab's research has led to the creation of two startup companies, Virtuoso Surgical and EndoTheia. We also work with outside companies, including startups such as Pathfinder Theraputics and Acoustic MedSystems, as well as larger companies including Intuitive Surgical and MathWorks. Current major projects include a surgical robot with tentacle-like, needle-diameter arms that removes tumors from the center of the head through the nose (partnership with Neurosurgery), a parallel robot that reduces invasiveness in cochlear implant surgery which restores hearing to the deaf (partnership with Otolanrygology), endowing the da Vinci with "surgical GPS" to enable more accurate and less invasive kidney surgery (partnership with Urologic Surgery), as well as systems for lung interventions (partnership with Radiology), transurethral laser prostate surgery (partnership with Urologic Surgery), and needle-based treatment of cerebral hemorrhages and epilepsy (partnership with Neurological Surgery). Graduate and undergraduate students in the MED Lab receive a unique educational experience in which they work side by side with surgeons, and are encouraged to pursue not only ongoing lab projects, but also their own ideas as they learn to be innovators in surgical engineering and robotics.
Bryn successfully defends his thesis entitled "Enabling Technologies for Image-Guided Interventions with Minimally Invasive Surgical Robots." Congratulations, Dr. Pitt!
Accuracy of Touch-Based Registration During Robotic Image-Guided Partial Nephrectomy Before and After Tumor Resection in Validated Phantoms (Kavoussi et al.), was featured as the cover article in Journal of Endourology Volume 35, Number 3, published March 2021. The research proposes a touch-based registration system to intraoperatively update a 3D kidney model with subsurface features, making image guidance feasible during robotic partial nephrectomy.
Our introductory robotics course was a smashing success this year! Eleven girls at Harpeth Hall, a local high school, learned the basics of robotics and programming using the MED Lab's custom made, open source pen drawing robot platform. The HarpBot, while capable of drawing the image below, was programmed by the girls to beat you in Hangman, the classic chalkboard word guessing game.
Dr. Webster is among the top 2 percent of 7 million working scientists in the world based on a recent study from Stanford University.
Kyle Leleux joined the MEDLab at the start of the new year. He is pursuing a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. Welcome, Kyle! We look forward to all the cool research you will be doing!
Two patents have been awarded for MED Lab inventions. The first patent is for a snare tool manipulator system, and the second patent is for a bronchoscopic continuum robot system for transoral lung access. Congratulations to the inventors!
EndoTheia, Inc., a startup company from the MED Lab, has begun formal operations and moved into a new office space near downtown Nashville! Equipped with new laser cutters and 3D printers, they are ready to start commercializing steerable sheaths for flexible endoscopy.
Congratulations to graduate student Tayfun Efe Ertop and team for being selected as a Best Student Paper Finalist at the 2020 Dynamic Systems and Controls Conference! Tayfun's paper is titled "Steerable Needle Trajectory Following in the Lung: Torsional Deadband Compensation and Full Pose Estimation with 5DOF Feedback for Needles Passing Through Flexible Endoscopes." He presented his work virtually and was chosen as a finalist from approximately 200 other papers!
Virtuoso Surgical, a startup company from the MED Lab, where many former lab members work, has raised $1.5 Million over the past few months (and counting!) through a Regulation A+ offering of shares to the general public. The funding will support the company's ongoing work to bring concentric tube robots to operating rooms around the world!
Dr. Webster started his 3rd year of teaching the class "Innovation Realization: From Academic Insight to Entrepreneurial Impact." The class combines teams of engineering Ph.D. students, law students, and MBA students to work on developing research ideas into products with a business plan!
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