Angular needle tracker and stabilizer for image-guided interventions

Introduction Minimally invasive image-guided interventions have changed the face of procedural medicine. For these procedures, safety and efficacy depend on precise needle placement. Needle targeting devices help improve the accuracy of needle placement, but their use has not seen broad penetration. Some of these devices are costly and require major modifications to the clinical workflow. In this article, we developed a low-cost, disposable, and easy-to-use angulation tracking device, which was based on a redesigned commercial passive needle holder. Material and methods The new design provided real-time angulation information for needle tracking. In this design, two potentiometers were used as angulation sensors, and they were connected to two axes of the passive needle holder’s arch structure through a 3 D-printed bridge structure. A control unit included an Arduino Pro Mini, a Bluetooth module, and two rechargeable batteries. The angulation was calculated and communicated in real time to a novel developed smartphone app, where real-time angulation information was displayed for guiding the operator to position the needle to the planned angles. Results The open-air test results showed that the average errors are 1.03° and 1.08° for left–right angulation and head–foot angulation, respectively. The animal cadaver tests revealed that the novel system had an average angular error of 3.2° and a radial distance error of 3.1 mm. Conclusions The accuracy was comparable with some commercially available solutions. The novel and low-cost needle tracking device may find a role as part of a real-time precision approach to both planning and implementation of image-guided therapies

Three-dimensional ultrasonic needle tip tracking with a fibre-optic ultrasound receiver

Ultrasound is frequently used for guiding minimally invasive procedures, but visualizing medical devices is often challenging with this imaging modality. When visualization is lost, the medical device can cause trauma to critical tissue structures. Here, a method to track the needle tip during ultrasound image-guided procedures is presented. This method involves the use of a fiber-optic ultrasound receiver that is affixed within the cannula of a medical needle to communicate ultrasonically with the external ultrasound probe. This custom probe comprises a central transducer element array and side element arrays. In addition to conventional two-dimensional (2D) B-mode ultrasound imaging provided by the central array, three-dimensional (3D) needle tip tracking is provided by the side arrays. For B-mode ultrasound imaging, a standard transmit-receive sequence with electronic beamforming is performed. For ultrasonic tracking, Golay-coded ultrasound transmissions from the 4 side arrays are received by the hydrophone sensor, and subsequently the received signals are decoded to identify the needle tip’s spatial location with respect to the ultrasound imaging probe. As a preliminary validation of this method, insertions of the needle/hydrophone pair were performed in clinically realistic contexts. This novel ultrasound imaging/tracking method is compatible with current clinical workflow, and it provides reliable device tracking during in-plane and out-of-plane needle insertions

SMART IMAGE-GUIDED NEEDLE INSERTION FOR TISSUE BIOPSY

M.S

Rastreamento de agulhas flexíveis em imagens de ultrassom para uso robótico de inserção automática

Monografia (graduação)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Tecnologia, Curso de Graduação em Engenharia de Controle e Automação, 2015.Esse trabalho visa o desenvolvimento de um módulo computacional para estimação automática da posição da ponta de agulhas flexíveis em intervenções minimamente invasivas a partir de imagens de ultrassom. Foi proposto um sistema de comunicação para realizar a aquisição das imagens geradas por um equipamento de ultrassom com interface de pesquisa e desenvolveu-se um algoritmo de processamento de imagens baseado em técnicas digitais clássicas, como filtros de suavização e limiarização, com o propósito de localizar a agulha. Testes foram realizados utilizando simuladores de tecido biológico, chamados de phantoms. Dois phantoms foram criados a partir de uma receita de gelatina, e em um deles reproduziu-se o efeito de dispersão característico de tecidos moles, utilizando partículas de fibras suspensas. Por fim, os resultados da estimação da ponta da agulha foram validados com um sistema de rastreamento eletromagnético composto de um sensor inserido na ponta de uma agulha tubular, outro sensor acoplado ao transdutor e um gerador de campo planar.This work focuses on the development of a computational module for automatic estimation of needle tip position from ultrasound images during minimally invasive procedures. A communication system was proposed for the acquisition of images generated by an ultrasound equipment with research interface. An imaging processing algorithm was developed based on classic digital techniques, such as smoothing and threshold filters, for needle localization. Tests were performed using biological tissue simulators called phantoms. Two phantoms were created from a gelatine recipe, and in one of them the dispersion effect, which is characteristic of soft tissues, was reproduced by the use of suspended fiber particles. The results of the needle tip estimation were validated using a magnetic tracking system composed of a sensor inside the tubular needle tip, a second sensor attached to the ultrasound probe, and a planar magnetic field generator

Experimental evaluation of ultrasound-guided 3D needle steering in biological tissue

Purpose In this paper, we present a system capable of automatically steering bevel tip flexible needles under ultrasound guidance toward stationary and moving targets in gelatin phantoms and biological tissue while avoiding stationary and moving obstacles. We use three-dimensional (3D) ultrasound to track the needle tip during the procedure. Methods Our system uses a fast sampling-based path planner to compute and periodically update a feasible path to the target that avoids obstacles. We then use a novel control algorithm to steer the needle along the path in a manner that reduces the number of needle rotations, thus reducing tissue damage. We present experimental results for needle insertion procedures for both stationary and moving targets and obstacles for up to 90 mm of needle insertion. Results We obtained a mean targeting error of 0.32±0.10 and 0.38±0.19 mm in gelatin-based phantom and biological tissue, respectively. Conclusions The achieved submillimeter accuracy suggests that our approach is sufficient to target the smallest lesions ( ϕ 2 mm) that can be detected using state-of-the-art ultrasound imaging systems