Needle path planning and steering in a three-dimensional non-static environment using two-dimensional ultrasound images

Abstract

Needle insertion is commonly performed in minimally invasive medical procedures such as biopsy and radiation cancer treatment. During such procedures, accurate needle tip placement is critical for correct diagnosis or successful treatment. Accurate placement of the needle tip inside tissue is challenging, especially when the target moves and anatomical obstacles must be avoided. We develop a needle steering system capable of autonomously and accurately guiding a steerable needle using two-dimensional (2D) ultrasound images. The needle is steered to a moving target while avoiding moving obstacles in a three-dimensional (3D) non-static environment. Using a 2D ultrasound imaging device, our system accurately tracks the needle tip motion in 3D space in order to estimate the tip pose. The needle tip pose is used by a rapidly exploring random tree-based motion planner to compute a feasible needle path to the target. The motion planner is sufficiently fast such that replanning can be performed repeatedly in a closed-loop manner. This enables the system to correct for perturbations in needle motion, and movement in obstacle and target locations. Our needle steering experiments in a soft-tissue phantom achieves maximum targeting errors of 0.86 ± 0.35 mm (without obstacles) and 2.16 ± 0.88 mm (with a moving obstacle).

3D Dynamic Motion Planning for Robot-Assisted Cannula Flexible Needle Insertion into Soft Tissue

“…However, different to other existing kinematics of the flexible needle [1,7,9,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20], because the planning algorithm considers the insertion pose of the needle, we have to add an insertion configuration to the kinematics:…”

3D ultrasound-guided robotic steering of a flexible needle via visual servoing

“…We now describe the experiment performed to test our needle steering technique, using the control law (17). The needle is inserted with a constant insertion velocity v * z = 0.5 mm/s, and the control gain is set to λ = 0.01.…”

“…The needle is steered into ex vivo bovine tissues towards a fixed target using a duty-cycling controller with intraoperative re-planning based on the detected needle pose. Vrooijink et al [17] place a 2D ultrasound transducer perpendicular to the direction of insertion and automatically re-position the transducer during insertion so that the needle tip stays in the image plane. In this previous work, the needle is steered in 3D with moving obstacle avoidance using the RRT algorithm and a duty-cycle controller.…”

Three-Dimensional Needle Shape Estimation in TRUS-Guided Prostate Brachytherapy Using 2-D Ultrasound Images

“…A voice coil actuator was attached to the needle to induce small vibrations that allow the needle to be seen in Doppler US. As well, Vrooijink et al [25], [26] developed a method for real-time needle tip tracking using a motorized US probe. Another technique developed by Yan et al [27] made use of difference imaging and shape-based level set segmentation for needle shape identification using transverse US images.…”

“…As well, we test the algorithm on both in-vitro phantom tissue experiments and in-vivo prostate brachytherapy images. Unlike [23]- [26], our method does not require the use of specialized needle attachments and can be readily incorporated with current clinical equipment. In contrast to [27], we used in-vivo prostate brachytherapy images and a threshold-based RANSAC approach to cope with the large amounts of noise and background objects present within clinical images.…”