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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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COMPUTER VISION

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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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Research Director
Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery
weston.ross@duke.edu

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Engineer
Ph.D. Candidate
guangshen.ma@duke.edu

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Lab Manager

Ph.D. Candidate

ravi.prakash@duke.edu

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Engineer
Ph.D. Student
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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Jacob Sperber

M.D. Student

jacob.sperber@duke.edu

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Sully Chen

M.D. Student

sully.chen@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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SURAJ DHULIPALLA

Engineer

Undergrad
suraj.dhulipalla@duke.edu

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Hope Hauck

High School

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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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