Planning for Steerable Bevel-tip Needle Insertion Through 2D Soft Tissue with Obstacles

Abstract

Abstract-Medical procedures such as seed implantation, biopsies, and treatment injections require inserting a needle to a specific target location inside the human body. Flexible needles with bevel tips are known to bend when inserted into soft tissues and can be inserted to targets unreachable by rigid symmetric-tip needles. Planning for such procedures is difficult because needle insertion causes soft tissues to displace and deform. In this paper, we develop a 2D planning algorithm for insertion of highly flexible bevel-tip needles into tissues with obstacles. Given an initial needle insertion plan specifying location, orientation, bevel rotation, and insertion distance, the planner combines soft tissue modeling and numerical optimization to generate a needle insertion plan that compensates for simulated tissue deformations, locally avoids polygonal obstacles, and minimizes needle insertion distance. Soft tissue deformations are simulated using a finite element formulation that models the effects of needle tip and frictional forces using a 2D mesh. The planning problem is formulated as a constrained nonlinear optimization problem which is locally minimized using a penalty method that converts the formulation to a sequence of unconstrained optimization problems. We apply the planner to bevel-right and bevel-left needles and generate plans for targets that are unreachable by rigid needles.

LQG-Based Planning, Sensing, and Control of Steerable Needles

“…In [12], a feedback controller is presented to stabilize the needle in a plane. Tissue deformation is taken into account in the planner of [1], which optimizes a path using 2-D FEM simulation of soft tissue.…”

Planning active cannula configurations through tubular anatomy

“…Optimization techniques have been used to account for tissue deformation as a result of needle insertion for stiff, symmetric-tip needles in 2D [3] and in 3D [10]. Alterovitz et al applied this approach to maneuver flexible, bevel-tip steerable needles around obstacles in soft tissues [2]. DiMaio et al [11] and Glozman et al [15] have explored simulation and planning for flexible symmetrictip needles in 2D deformable tissue.…”

“…Optimizationbased motion planning has been applied to steerable needles inserted in 2D tissue slices around polygonal obstacles [2]. Other approaches include diffusion-based motion planning to numerically compute a path in 3D stiff tissues [24], screwbased motion planning to compute steerable needle paths in 3D around spherical obstacles [12], rapidly exploring random trees [34], and planning methods that explicitly consider uncertainty in the needle's motion to maximize the probability of successfully reaching the target [1], [4].…”

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

“…The main advantage of this technique is that the needle can be guided precisely towards the target without having to perform multiple retractions and re-insertions, thus reducing the duration of the intervention. In addition, flexible needle steering allows the system to reach otherwise unattainable targets by avoiding obstacles such as vessels or bones [4], [5].…”