Image-guided microwave thermoablation of hepatic tumours using novel robotic guidance: an early experience

Abstract

• Few reports are available in the literature regarding robotic-assisted liver microwave ablation. • The robotic guided approach improved accuracy of localizing the target tumour. • Radiation dose on patients was reduced with the robotic guidance. • Numbers of insertions and readjustments were reduced, lowering chances of complications.

A multimodality imaging-compatible insertion robot with a respiratory motion calibration module designed for ablation of liver tumors: a preclinical study

“…The robot in our study was with realtime multimodality imaging-compatible and a respiratory motion calibration module, with which the physician could evaluate the influence of the respiratory movement and the adjacent important structures to avoid unnecessary injuries. With the feedback function of the insertion robot designed by our team mentioned above, the results of the accuracy and ablation tests with a large sample on a rigid body model and a phantom model placed on a moving device simulating respiratory movements in our study were consistent with the those of the researches of other teams [10,13,14,[16][17][18]. And we first evaluated the influences of the physicians' experience on ablation procedure and use NASA-TLX method to describe the subjective attitude to the procedure of the physicians both with and without the robot's assistant in our study.…”

“…As the medical technology develops, robots designed for ablation of liver tumors could offer a technical solution to increase the insertion accuracy [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] and ensure the ablation effects [5,[9][10][11]13,16] without the influence of the experience of the physicians. The robots that were reported were single-imaging compatible, including two compatible with 3D ultrasound [8,10] and the others compatible with CT [5,7,10,11,13,15,16] or MRI [6]. Thus far, to our knowledge, the reported robots increased the insertion accuracy through positioning the antenna to the exact spatial coordinate according to the pre-procedure insertion plan made on the basis of pre-procedure images.…”

Stereotactic image‐guided microwave ablation of hepatocellular carcinoma using a computer‐assisted navigation system

“…The group in Innsbruck reports lateral errors of 3.6 ± 2.5 mm in a series of 145 needle placements on 20 patients using an optical navigation system . Users of a robotic navigation system report applicator active point deviation after the first needle insertion of 5.3 ± 1.8 mm and 3.1 ± 2.5 mm for series of 21 resp. 34 patients.…”

Stereotactic CT-Guided Percutaneous Microwave Ablation of Liver Tumors With the Use of High-Frequency Jet Ventilation: An Accuracy and Procedural Safety Study

“…Several robotic systems for percutaneous needle-guided interventions using CT or MRI are commercially available and automatically orientate and drive the antenna tip to the intended target position (213, 214). Mean tracking error, defined as the distance between the intended target and the tip of the antennae, of 1.6 to 5.3 mm with robotic guidance systems (215,216) and 3.6 to 3.8 mm with stereotactic navigation systems are reported (217, 218).…”