Integrated navigation and control software system for MRI-guided robotic prostate interventions

Abstract

A software system to provide intuitive navigation for MRI-guided robotic transperineal prostate therapy is presented. In the system, the robot control unit, the MRI scanner, and the open-source navigation software are connected together via Ethernet to exchange commands, coordinates, and images using an open network communication protocol, OpenIGTLink. The system has six states called "workphases" that provide the necessary synchronization of all components during each stage of the clinical workflow, and the user interface guides the operator linearly through these workphases. On top of this framework, the software provides the following features for needle guidance: interactive target planning; 3D image visualization with current needle position; treatment monitoring through real-time MR images of needle trajectories in the prostate. These features are supported by calibration of robot and image coordinates by fiducial-based registration. Performance tests show that the registration error of the system was 2.6 mm within the prostate volume. Registered real-time 2D images were displayed 1.97 s after the image location is specified.

Three-Dimensional Controlled Motion of a Microrobot using Magnetic Gradients

“…The problem of vessels extraction has received considerable attention in the computer vision and medical imaging communities [10]. Hence, several class of methods have been proposed to find a path from a set of medical imaging, such as using tracking methods [11] [6] [12], path extraction methods [13][14] [15], and so on. Most works based on in vivo MR-tracking methods usually need many user-defined way points as the input of a controller module for the navigation computation.…”

Endovascular navigation of a ferromagnetic microrobot using MRI-based predictive control

“…The problem of vessels extraction has received considerable attention in the computer vision and medical imaging communities [11]. Hence, several class of methods have been proposed to find a path from a set of medical imaging, such as using tracking methods [12] [7] [13], path extraction methods [14][15] [16], and so on. Most works based on in vivo MR-tracking methods usually need many user-defined way points as the input of a controller module for the navigation computation.…”

MRI-based microrobotic system for the propulsion and navigation of ferromagnetic microcapsules

“…The problem of vessels extraction has received considerable attention in the computer vision and medical imaging communities [11]. Hence, several class of methods have been proposed to find a path from a set of medical imaging, such as using tracking methods [12] [7] [13], path extraction methods [14][15] [16], and so on. Most works based on in vivo MR-tracking 6 methods usually need many user-defined way points as the input of a controller module for the navigation computation.…”

“…According to these parameters, the model of the process using (13) and (14) in 20 CARIMA (5) form is:…”