Luca™ robot successfully performs its first ophthalmic operations on patients

AcuSurgical, winner of the Companies And Campus program in 2019 and designer of the world's first bi-manual ophthalmic robot, Luca™, has reached a decisive milestone: the success of the first operations performed with its robot. The start-up aims to revolutionize retinal disease surgery, among the most delicate and complex procedures in ophthalmology, by offering an unprecedented level of precision.

Co-founded in 2020 by Christophe Spuhler and two LIRMM researchers, Philippe Poignet and Yassine Haddab, together with 2 vitreoretinal surgeons from Saint-Etienne University Hospital and Jean Monnet University, Philippe Gain and Gilles Thuret, AcuSurgical has developed the world's first bi-manual ophthalmic robot. The first Luca™-assisted operations have just been performed at Ghent University Hospital in Belgium. A major milestone in the development of this innovation: "The laboratory has been developing robots for some thirty years, with the aim of helping surgeons with their movements. It's very satisfying to see the Luca™ robot develop through to the patient experimentation phases. This is a first validation step before filing for certification on the European and American markets," enthuses Philippe Poignet.

After initial maturation funding from SATT AxLR obtained in 2018, Christophe Spuhler and the two researchers were awarded the program proposed by UM: " After the idea maturation phase, the Companies and Campus program enabled us to recruit, at a crucial moment in the project's development, a third engineer on functionalities linked to robot guidance using vision."

The robot enhances procedural capabilities and gives the surgeon greater control, improving dexterity and the quality of the procedures performed. "Initially, our ambition is to carry out the surgeon's procedure with greater precision, and in the future we would like the robot to be able to carry out sub-retinal injections, which are currently very difficult to perform due to the level of precision required," says Yassine Haddab.

Before the experimental phase, the Luca™ robot had to be developed over several years to ensure that no unforeseen gestures would endanger the patient's vision. This phase also involves training and adapting surgeons to the robot: "Teams need to become familiar with the robot, because a machine like this changes the paradigms of how teams are used to working," say the two researchers. An innovation that could revolutionize the lives of 300 million people worldwide currently suffering from retinal disease.