
WHERE ENGINEERING MEETS NEUROSURGERY
In 2015, the Brain Tool Laboratory was established by Dr. Patrick Codd as a collaboration between the Department of Neurosurgery and the Pratt School of Engineering.
Since that time, engineers and neurosurgeons have worked together to tackle some of the most difficult problems facing the surgical community. Fostering a true atmosphere of collaboration, the Brain Tool Laboratory is in a unique position to bring about significant change to the field of surgical robotics. Through a careful examination of surgical operations, researchers approach each problem by stripping away the physical and mental constraints imposed by decades of traditional surgical methodology.
In this manner, the Brain Tool Laboratory is able to advance the field of surgical robotics while keeping patient benefit and overall device value as its highest priorities.

RESEARCH & DISCOVERIES
Current Areas of Study

SURGICAL ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION
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SPECTRAL TISSUE CLASSIFICATION

SURGICAL INSTRUMENT TRACKING

SENSOR FUSION

COMPUTER VISION

AUGMENTED REALITY

PEOPLE
Fielding the strongest team in translational surgical robotics research

PATRICK CODD, M.D.
Lab Director
Associate Professor of Neurosurgery
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
patrick.codd@dm.duke.edu

Select BTL Publications
PUBLISHED WORK

A NOVEL LASER SCALPEL SYSTEM FOR COMPUTER-ASSISTED LASER SURGERY
Laser scalpels are utilized across a variety of surgical and dermatological procedures due to their precision
and non-contact nature. This paper presents a novel laser scalpel system for superficial laser therapy applications. The
system integrates a RGB-D camera, a 3D triangulation sensor and a carbon dioxide (CO2) laser scalpel for computer-assisted
laser surgery. To accurately ablate targets chosen from the color image, a 3D extrinsic calibration method between the RGB-D camera frame and the laser coordinate system is implemented.
Ma, G., Ross, W., Hill, I., Narasimhan, N., & Codd, P.J., 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (pp. 386-392).

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