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The use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for guiding robotic surgical devices has shown great potential for performing precisely targeted and controlled interventions. To fully realize these benefits, devices must work safely within the tight confines of the MRI bore without negatively impacting image quality. Here we expand on previous work exploring MRI guided robots for neural interventions by presenting the mechanical design and assessment of a device for positioning, orienting, and inserting an interstitial ultrasound-based ablation probe. From our previous work we have added a 2 degree of freedom (DOF) needle driver for use with the aforementioned probe, revised the mechanical design to improve strength and function, and performed an evaluation of the mechanism’s accuracy and effect on MR image quality. The result of this work is a 7-DOF MRI robot capable of positioning a needle tip and orienting it’s axis with accuracy of 1.37 ± 0.06mm and 0.79° ± 0.41°, inserting it along it’s axis with an accuracy of 0.06 ± 0.07mm, and rotating it about it’s axis to an accuracy of 0.77° ± 1.31°. This was accomplished with no significant reduction in SNR caused by the robot’s presence in the MRI bore, ≤ 10.3% reduction in SNR from running the robot’s motors during a scan, and no visible paramagnetic artifacts.

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Intra-operative imaging is sometimes available to assist needle biopsy, but typical open-loop insertion does not account for unmodeled needle deflection or target shift. Closed-loop image-guided compensation for deviation from an initial straight-line trajectory through rotational control of an asymmetric tip can reduce targeting error. Incorporating robotic closed-loop control often reduces physician interaction with the patient, but by pairing closed-loop trajectory compensation with hands-on cooperatively controlled insertion, a physician's control of the procedure can be maintained while incorporating benefits of robotic accuracy. A series of needle insertions were performed with a typical 18G needle using closed-loop active compensation under both fully autonomous and user-directed cooperative control. We demonstrated equivalent improvement in accuracy while maintaining physician-in-the-loop control with no statistically significant difference (p > 0.05) in the targeting accuracy between any pair of autonomous or individual cooperative sets, with average targeting accuracy of 3.56 mm. With cooperatively controlled insertions and target shift between 1 and 10 mm introduced upon needle contact, the system was able to effectively compensate up to the point where error approached a maximum curvature governed by bending mechanics. These results show closed-loop active compensation can enhance targeting accuracy, and that the improvement can be maintained under user directed cooperative insertion.

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