A MRI-Guided Robot for Neurosurgery: Optimization, Registration and Tracking

Abstract

The common requirement for most minimally invasive surgery (MIS) procedures is to manipulate a surgical tool relative to an anatomic target. This includes aligning and orienting the tool to a specific anatomic target in the patient. Neurosurgical procedure, one of MIS, is a highly interactive process requiring of highly localization accuracy. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has established itself as a standard tool in clinical diagnosis and advanced brain research. MRI offers a very high image quality, and it can distinguish different tissues clearly, especially the soft tissues to a high standard, and does not use ionizing radiation or injection of radioactive liquid. MRI is one of the real time modalities currently being using in minimally invasive interventions with unique features of accurate, fast, affordable, and less hazardous to both patients and surgeons [1]. When compared to other imaging methods, such as X-ray fluoroscopy and CT, MRI is superior in imaging guidance during neurosurgery. The advantages of robot-based neurosurgical procedures are well recognized in the clinical and technical community due to both the localization accuracy, dexterity and the tele-surgery potential of robotic system. So the percutaneous procedures with robotic assistance and intraoperative MRI-guidance are good solutions for neurosurgery.Recently, more and more attentions are paid to the research of MRI-guided robots. One of the pioneering works in the field of MR compatible interventional robotics was Abstract: In this paper the design of a novel ultrasonic motor (USM) actuated robot system and a new infrastructure of automatically MRI-guided intervention for open MRI-guided neurosurgery are presented. The targeted clinical applications of the proposed robot are based on minimally invasive surgery procedures, such as biopsy and brachytherapy. Workspace optimization is conducted based on the operation workspace, design requirements and the constrained openning of the actual MRI scanner. To automatically undertake the alignment and orientation of the surgical needle throughout the neurosurgical procedures, a registration phantom was designed to determine the transformations between the MRI coordinate system and robot coordinate system. The tracking theory was then derived. The surgical procedure based on real-time MRI-guidance was reported.