New NIH Grant to Further Development of Brain Surgery Robot

A research team from the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) and the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) has received a $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to continue developing a small robot that could one day aid neurosurgeons in removing hard-to-reach brain tumors. The grant is one of the first from the NIH to be awarded to a joint UMB and UMCP research project under the collaboration known as University of Maryland: MPowering the State.

Team members Jaydev P. Desai, PhD, associate professor of mechanical engineering at UMCP; along with Rao Gullapalli, MD, associate professor of diagnostic radiology and nuclear medicine, and J. Marc Simard, MD, professor of neurosurgery, both of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, have developed a “Minimally Invasive Neurosurgical Intracranial Robot” (MINIR) prototype over a number of years and demonstrated its feasibility, supported in part by a previous NIH grant. They have evaluated the device under continuous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). According to the researchers, work done on the previous NIH grant helped to uncover next-level challenges that are the basis of this new NIH project. For more information, click here to read the full release.