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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.

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RESEARCH & DISCOVERIES

Current Areas of Study

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SURGICAL ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION

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SPECTRAL TISSUE CLASSIFICATION

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SURGICAL INSTRUMENT TRACKING

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SENSOR FUSION

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Continuum Robots

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AUGMENTED REALITY

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PEOPLE

Fielding the strongest team in translational surgical robotics research

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Lab Director
Associate Professor of Neurosurgery

Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
patrick.codd@duke.edu

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Lab Manager

Ph.D. Candidate, NSF-TAST Trainee

ravi.prakash@duke.edu

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Engineer
Ph.D. Candidate, NSF-TAST Trainee
kent.yamamoto@duke.edu

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Engineer
Ph.D. Student, NSF-TAST Trainee

tanner.zachem@duke.edu

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Daniel Sexton,M.D.

Neurosurgery Resident

daniel.sexton@duke.edu

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Neurosurgery Resident

eli.johnson@duke.edu

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Caroline Chen

Engineer

MS, ECE

caroline.x.chen@duke.edu

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Zacharias Chen

Engineer

Undergraduate
zacharias.chen@duke.edu

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Alexa Cristelle Cahilig

Engineer

Undergraduate

alexacristelle.cahilig@duke.edu

Patrick Zheng

Engineer

Undergraduate
zacharias.chen@duke.edu

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Prithu Kolar

High School 

North Carolina School of Science and Maths

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High School 

North Carolina School of Science and Maths

Felicity Lipchak

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You

Researcher

Contact Us: patrick.codd@duke.edu

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Select BTL Publications

PUBLISHED WORK

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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).

Get Paper Here

Read More
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CONTACT US

Duke University - North Building 
304 Research Drive Durham, NC

919-681-2610

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