Robotic knee surgery platform developer OmniLife Science said today it began testing on its OmniBotics active spacer robotic tissue balancing device at 3 US sites after having won FDA 510(k) clearance in September.

The Raynham, Mass.based company said its OmniBotics active spacer is designed to allow surgeons performing total knee surgeries to quantitatively manage the soft tissue envelope during the procedure and can be combined with the company’s OmniBotics system for a customized procedure from a skeletal and tissue-based perspective.

“I believe that the active spacer technology is the tool we have been looking for to create even better predictability and reproducibility for knee replacement surgery I’m very excited to offer this system to my patients,” Dr. Jeffrey Lawrence said in a press release.

“The active spacer technology is a great step forward that brings the most advanced measurement and analysis tools directly to each patient and surgeon right in the operating room. It’s an unprecedented, real-time evaluation of the knee that optimizes each step of the procedure,” Dr. John Keggi said in a prepared statement.

OMNI said that the new addition intends to improve patient satisfaction by improving soft tissue balancing, as many knee replacement patients do not achieve full satisfaction, even when implants are well placed, due to sub-optimal soft tissue balancing.

“The active spacer is an amazing new technology for knee replacement. It actually shows your surgeon, in real time, how tight or loose your knee is on each side as it bends. This information is then fed into a robot, which plans how your knee is replaced on an individual basis for optimum results. I believe that this revolutionary, never before seen technology will get us not one–but several–steps closer to the Holy Grail of knee replacement: the freely moving, perfectly stable and pain-free knee,” orthopedic surgeon Dr. Amber Randall said in a prepared release.

The robotic company touted the OmniBotics active spacer as the only tech that “quantitatively drives the total knee replacement surgical procedure with both alignment and ligament balancing.”