A new study from Frost & Sullivan (Palo Alto, Calif.) says the image-guided and robot-assisted surgery (RAS) market earned revenues of $813 million in 2007 and estimates that this will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 25.8 percent between 2008 and 2014.

The company says that capital costs for robotics or image-guided surgery systems that can exceed $1 million are a key factor in their slow adoption. Proving that surgical robotics is cost effective and improves clinical success and a broad number of clinical applications involving minimal training can help expedite the market adoption of systems, it adds.