Design, development, and evaluation of a master–slave surgical system for breast biopsy under continuous MRI

Abstract

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) provides superior soft-tissue contrast in cancer diagnosis compared to other imaging modalities. However, the strong magnetic field inside the MRI bore along with limited scanner bore size poses significant challenges. Since current approaches in breast biopsy using MR images is primarily a blind targeting approach, it is necessary to develop a MRI-compatible robot that can avoid multiple needle insertions into the breast tissue. This MRI-compatible robotic system could potentially lead to improvement in the targeting accuracy and reduce sampling errors. A master-slave surgical system has been developed comprising of a MRI-compatible slave robot which consists of one piezo motor and five pneumatic cylinders connected by long pneumatic transmission lines. The slave robot follows the configuration of the master robot, which provides an intuitive manipulation interface for the physician and operates inside the MRI bore to adjust the needle position and orientation and perform needle insertion task. Based on the MRI experiments using the slave robot, there was no significant distortion in the images and hence the slave robot can be safely operated inside the MRI with minimal loss in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Ex vivo and in vivo experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the master-slave surgical system.

Controlling the Stormram 2: An MRI-compatible robotic system for breast biopsy

“…Su et al developed different piezo/pneumatic-driven robots for prostate biopsy, of which the control electronics are placed in a shielded box inside the MRI room [3]. Yang et al developed a piezo/pneumatic robotic system for breast biopsy [4]. Li et al developed a transapical aortic valve replacement robot using the commercial Innomotion arm combined with a custom 3-DOF delivery module driven by pneumatic cylinders with optical feedback sensors [5].…”

“…In figure 5(d), the Robot Coordinate System Ψ R uniquely determines the coordinates of the critical points. Furthermore, the five lengths 4 and L 5 provide a desired end-effector (E) position and orientation. Stormram 2 consists of five pneumatic linear stepper actuators and can therefore control the endeffector in five degrees of freedom, i.e.…”

Combined Adaptive and Predictive Control for a Teleoperation System with Force Disturbance and Input Delay

“…Mechatronics instruments for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided intervention allow conducting complex procedures that would otherwise be very time consuming and error prone (Tse et al, 2012;Yang et al, 2014;Franco et al, 2016). Typically, a specially designed robot operates inside the scanner bore where the patient cannot be easily accessed (Yang et al, 2014).…”

“…Typically, a specially designed robot operates inside the scanner bore where the patient cannot be easily accessed (Yang et al, 2014). In order to comply with the restrictive safety requirements of the MRI environment, special actuation methods should be employed.…”

“…This scenario is relevant to systems in which the controller and the power source are located remotely from the actuator, as in the case of robots for percutaneous intervention under MRI-guidance (Yang et al, 2014;Franco et al, 2016). The proposed control scheme extends the predictive controller in Karafyllis and Krstic (2013) to tracking tasks and removes the assumption of bounded disturbances.…”