No abstract

This paper presents a new approach validated experimentally to reconstruct with strain gauges the deformed shape of a straight beam with circular cross section. It is based on a novel beam-specific strain gauge model that improves the strain measurement by taking into account the width of the gauges. These improved strain measurements are used by a 3D finite strain large displacement beam shape reconstruction method to recover the deformed shape iteratively. The whole reconstruction approach has been validated experimentally with 3D deformations of a beam instrumented with strain gauges. Results show that the strain gauge model developed improves reconstruction accuracy and that beam reconstruction can be achieved effectively.

Needles are tools that are used daily during minimally invasive procedures. During the insertions needles may be affected by deformations which may threaten the success of the procedure. To tackle this problem, needles with embedded strain sensors have been developed and associated with navigation systems. The localization of the needle in the tissues is then obtained in real-time by reconstruction from the strain measurements, allowing the physician to optimize its gesture. As the number of strain sensors embedded is limited in number, their positions on the needle have a great impact on the accuracy of the shape reconstruction. The main contribution of this paper is a novel strain sensor positioning method to improve the reconstruction accuracy. A notable feature of our method is the use of experimental needle insertion data, which increases the relevancy of the resulting sensor optimal locations. To the best of author's knowledge no experimentally-based needle sensor positioning method has been presented yet. Reconstruction validations from clinical data show that the localization accuracy of the needle tip is improved by almost 40% with optimal locations compared to equidistant locations when reconstructing with two sensor triplets or more.