Modular robotic platform for precision neurosurgery with a bio-inspired needle: System overview and first in-vivo deployment

Abstract

Over the past 10 years, minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has shown significant benefits compared to conventional surgical techniques, with reduced trauma, shorter hospital stays, and shorter patient recovery times. In neurosurgical MIS procedures, inserting a straight tool (e.g. catheter) is common practice in applications ranging from biopsy and laser ablation, to drug delivery and fluid evacuation. How to handle tissue deformation, target migration and access to deep-seated anatomical structures remain an open challenge, affecting both the preoperative planning phase and eventual surgical intervention. Here, we present the first neurosurgical platform in the literature, able to deliver an implantable steerable needle for a range of diagnostic and therapeutic applications, with a short-term focus on localised drug delivery. This work presents the system’s architecture and first in vivo deployment with an optimised surgical workflow designed for pre-clinical trials with the ovine model, which demonstrate appropriate function and safe implantation.

Autonomous medical needle steering in vivo

“…No prior autonomous medical robot had completed a task in an obstacle-cluttered parenchyma of an organ where visual supervision was not possible and an implicit roadmap of the anatomy, such as the lumen of a blood vessel, did not exist (6,(36)(37)(38)(39)(40). Prior work on needle steering in vivo focused on measuring needle/tissue interaction properties or teleoperation without automatic consideration of patient-specific obstacles (8,19,41). We demonstrated the clinical feasibility of our semiautonomous system through in vivo porcine experiments and through a comparative study where our system outperformed a modern clinical approach in safely and accurately accessing hard-to-reach peripheral intraprenchymal targets.…”

“…Our group and others have put considerable effort into developing autonomous steerable needles and evaluating them via ex vivo and benchtop experiments (10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18). Prior work has deployed steerable needles in vivo, including via teleoperation (8,19), but no prior in vivo work has reported deploying a steerable needle to a predefined target autonomously. Automating a steerable needle procedure in vivo is substantially more challenging than automating an insertion on a benchtop or in ex vivo tissues because of the higher stakes in obstacle avoidance (for example, puncturing a critical blood vessel can be fatal), the substantial increase in uncertainty in needle/tissue interaction properties, and the need to account for living tissue motion (for example, because of breathing).…”

Mapping Stiffness Landscape of Heterogeneous and Anisotropic Fibrous Tissue

“…By adopting equivalent anisotropic and continuum material properties and leveraging DL, we can efficiently simulate complex composites without explicitly modeling numerous fibers, leading to practical and accurate results in a multiscale system. Understanding the multiscale mechanics of structureproperty linkages is crucial to developing unbiased models for accurate predictions of skin aging 61 , brain folding [62][63][64][65][66] , DAI, TBI, neurosurgery [67][68][69] , neuroglial disorders, as well as the design and fabrication of microcatheter 70,71 , implantable brain microelectrodes 72,73 , and surgical robots for drug delivery 74,75 . This study established a new multidisciplinary framework to accurately link the mechanical properties across the scales.…”

Thermal and Magnetic Dual-Responsive Catheter-Assisted Shape Memory Microrobots for Multistage Vascular Embolization

“…Accessing the vascular system using catheters has revolutionized minimally invasive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, providing numerous clinical benefits [ 1 , 2 ]. However, the distal vascular routes pose marked challenges for safe catheter access due to various factors, including longer access routes, vessel tortuosity, and delicate blood vessel walls [ 3 , 4 ].…”