The Critical Role of Homotopy Continuation in Robotic-Assisted Surgery - Future Perspective.

This article provides an introduction and overview of the mathematical concept of homotopy continuation and its applications - especially for path tracing - in robotic-assisted surgery. It explains the importance of homotopy continuation in solving path-planning and restriction problems and image re-construction. The opinion article starts with a short introduction to robotic-assisted surgery and also provides several examples of how homotopy continuation has been used in other areas of robotics. Further advancements in homotopy continuation techniques are anticipated and with the combination of machine and deep learning it will likely enable researchers to plan out safer surgeries with the assistance of homotopy-guided robots.