Background: Prostate cancer is a common disease in men and has a relatively high mortality rate. However, the interventional medical equipment used for prostate biopsy and brachytherapy has always been a social concern.Methods: To understand interventional medical equipment for prostate cancer, the structure of manual, semi-automatic and automatic medical equipment were considered as the mainline, while the corresponding research on these structures were the auxiliary lines. The characteristics and corresponding research status have been discussed.Results: Interventional medical equipment for prostate cancer with different degrees of automation and its characteristics were determined, and the imaging principles and characteristics of computed tomography, transrectal ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging have been briefly described. Conclusion:Certain feasible research suggestions have been proposed for future development from the perspective of structure, accuracy and safety. These include flexible and compact robot structures, high-precision image recognition and guidance, accurate dose planning and monitoring, real-time imaging monitoring without delay, high-precision needle insertion strategy, master-slave control, virtual reality and remote control.

Proton heavy ion radiotherapy is widely used and currently represents the most advanced radiotherapy technology. However, at present, proton heavy ion radiotherapy chairs in fixed beam radiotherapy rooms do not have a head and neck positioning function. This paper presents a novel design for a proton heavy ion radiotherapy chair with a head and neck positioning device. The design of the posture adjustment mechanism and the head and neck positioning device of the treatment chair is based on U-TRIZ theory and ergonomics, respectively. A positive kinematic analysis of the posture adjusting mechanism was carried out, as well as a workspace analysis of the head and neck positioning device. Finally, positioning error experiment and ergonomic evaluation were performed on a prototype of the head and neck positioning device. The proposed design of the treatment chair satisfies the requirements for posture adjustment and achieves the head and neck positioning function. The experimental results also provide a basis for further optimization of the design.

The robotic archwire bending technology has been used clinically to free orthodontic doctors from the heavy labor because of the improvement of the digital medical technology, and the digital expression of orthodontic archwire is necessary to realize the robotic archwire bending. Because of the differences between the human tooth arrangement and the difficulty of archwire shape design, it is difficult to realize the digital expression of orthodontic archwire. A method for the digital expression and interactive adjustment of personalized orthodontic archwire is presented in this paper. The straight section and the transitional section of the brackets are defined according to the reference points of the brackets. The transitional sections of the brackets are built by the mathematical model of Cubic Bezier curve. The process of handmade archwire bending, the method of discretization and combination are considered in the establishment of the mathematical model and model library about special function arch curve. The ways of the adjustment of the straight sections, the deformation of the transitional section shape, the selections of the position and type of special function arch curve are used in the study of the method for the digital expression and interactive adjustment of personalized orthodontic archwire. The interactive adjustment software is designed by the LABVIEW software. The archwire bending experiment is carried out, the error rate of the bent archwire ranged between 1.1% and 6.7% which proves the digital expression and interactive adjustment method of personalized orthodontic archwire for robotic bending is feasible and effective.

Ultrasonic scanning is the most commonly used method for detecting breast cancer. Traditional breast ultrasound mainly relies on manual examination, which requires doctors with rich clinical experience. The scanning path planning of the robot for breast ultrasound examination based on binocular vision and non-uniform rational B-Splines (NURBS) is proposed in this paper to solve the limitations of traditional examination methods. First, breast images are acquired by the binocular camera. The depth information of the images is obtained through stereo matching, and the 3D point cloud reconstruction of the breast model is completed. Second, the spatial index algorithm based on the K-dimension tree (Kd-tree) and uniform sampling method are selected to denoise and down-sample the point cloud model to complete the preliminary optimization of the model. The point cloud information for the scanning path is extracted according to the method of point cloud extraction and the principle of normal vector calculation. Then, the interpolation optimization of the scanning path based on the NURBS curve is completed. The optimized scanning path is transformed into the robot motion path. Finally, the robot motion is simulated and analyzed, and the experimental results show that the rationality of robot operation and the smoothness of robot motion meet the requirements of path planning defined in this paper. The error analysis experiment shows that the path planned by this method can ensure the efficiency and accuracy of ultrasound examination.INDEX TERMS Ultrasound examination, binocular vision, NURBS, scanning path planning, point cloud reconstruction, robot path planning.