Development of Passive Arthroscope Holder with Counter Balance Mechanism for Gravity Compensation

In typical arthroscopic surgery, a lead surgeon performs surgical operation while an arthroscopic camera is holding by an assistant surgeon. Fatigue during surgical operation causes an unstable image, which disturbs the lead surgeon and deteriorates the surgical outcome. Many designs of arthroscopic camera holder were developed in order to stabilize the image and to help the surgeons getting their desired camera angle. A good design of arthroscopic camera holder would assist a surgeon yielding a good surgical outcome. In this research, a passive arthroscope holder with counter balance mechanism is designed and constructed. The designed 7 degrees of freedom arthroscope holder with integrated electromagnetic brakes is control by single switch. The counter balance mechanism is added in order to reduce manipulation load. The performance of the counter balance mechanism is evaluated by measuring manipulation load. Comparing the manipulation load without and with counter balance mechanism, the manipulation load is reduced from 4.4 kgf to 3.5 kgf. The current method of counter balancing for gravity compensation achieves 20% load reduction for the arthroscope holder in this research. The surgeon can manipulate the passive manipulator easily and more intuitive than the braking mechanism solely.