Engineers at Children’s Hospital Boston (Boston,MA,USA; www.children-shospital.org) have designed a prototype two-armed, joystick-controlled neurosurgical robot that has the potential to transform complex brain surgeries, such as excising tumors.

During tests,neurosurgeons found that the dual-armed robot allowed them to complete delicate operations faster than using traditional manual instruments,all while avoiding the compression of adjacent brain tissue.

The robot skillfully executed a range of two-handed neurosurgical tasks required for tumor removal and reducing tumor size in lab-created models.

The crowning achievement was the endoscopic extraction of a pineal tumor from the core of a 3D model brain,based on imaging data from an infant patient.