The NeuroMate™ robot system (Integrated Surgical Systems, Davis, CA) is a commercially available, image-guided, robotic-assisted system used for stereotactic procedures in neurosurgery. In this article, we present a quantitative comparison of the application accuracy of the NeuroMate with that of standard frame-based and frameless stereotactic techniques. The article discusses a five-way application accuracy comparison study. The variables of our comparison and their mean errors are as follows:

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... (1) with the robot in a frame-based configuration, the RMS was 0.86 ؎ 0.32 mm; (2) with the robot in the frameless configuration, the RMS was 1.95 ؎ 0.44 mm; (3) in a standard stereotactic (ZD) frame-based approach, the RMS was 1.17 ؎ 0.25 mm; (4) with an infrared tracking system using the frame for fiducial registration, the RMS was 1.47 ؎ 0.45 mm; (5) with an infrared tracking system using screw markers for registration, the RMS was 0.68 ؎ 0.26 mm. The study was performed with 2-mm sections of CT scans. These results show that the application accuracy of the frame-based NeuroMate robot is comparable to that of standard localizing systems, whether they are frame-based or infrared tracked. Comp Aid Surg 7:90 -98 (2002). OBJECTIVE Medical robotic systems are playing an increasing role in different image-guided surgical procedures. The key advantages are that robots can effectively position, orient, and manipulate surgical tools in 3D space with a high level of accuracy. Several medical robots or robotic arms have been reported for clinical applications. 1-6 This article presents NeuroMate™ (Integrated Surgical Systems, Inc., Davis, CA), an image-guided, computer-controlled robotic system that has been specifically designed for neurosurgical applications. 1 NeuroMate includes a five-degree-of-freedom robotic arm assembly and a PC-based kinematic positioning software system (Fig. 1) . The system software (VoXim™, IVS Software Engineering) allows precise image-based planning and visualization of multiple trajectories. During surgery, the system provides interac-