Robotic guidance for percutaneous interventions

A robotic system is being developed by ARC Seibersdorf Research in cooperation with the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Physics as well as Diagnostic Radiology (both located at the Vienna University Hospital) in order to assist interventional radiologists when they are doing ultrasound (US)- or computed tomography (CT)-guided biopsies. According to the requirements from clinical practice, the complete system is mounted on a mobile platform and uses video I/O as a standardized interface to the various CT and US devices in practical use. During planning of the intervention, the interventionalist can use the US or CT scans acquired before to select the skin entry point as well as the target point. After confirmation of the planning, the robot is moved to the start position using different modes of motion. Finally, the needle is manually inserted by the interventionalist. The complete intervention can be monitored and documented by means of superimposed information of the planned and real biopsy trajectory on the actual CT or US scan. A feasibility study making use of a dedicated custom-made robotic system is aimed to validate the elaborated concept. The paper describes the developed arm and the controller architecture, and gives some first results from a pre-clinical test using a needle-penetrable medical phantom.