Real-Time Ultrasonic Tracking of an Intraoperative Needle Tip with Integrated Fibre-Optic Hydrophone

Baker, Christian; Xochicale, Miguel; Joubert, Francois; Lin, Fang-Yu; Mathews, Sunish; Shakir, Dzhoshkun I.; Ourselin, Sébastien; David, Anna L.; Dromey, Brian; Desjardins, Adrien E.; Zhang, Edward; Beard, Paul C.; Vercauteren, Tom; Xia, Wenfeng

doi:10.1109/ius52206.2021.9593381

Cited by 4 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…This suggests that the displacement is likely a residual difference between the apparent position of the needle tip in the US image and the true position of the tip of the embedded FOH; in contrast, the homogenous experiment demonstrated better tracking performance because the ground truths were derived from FOH signals rather than the US image of the needle tip. Previous work involving manual labelling of the position of a needle tip in water estimated the accuracy of manual labelling to be approximately ±0.5 mm [ 46 ], so it is likely that human error is also a significant contributing factor. For our experiment, the needle tip was particularly difficult to locate precisely due to the short focal-depth used.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Each column of the frame corresponds to a time-domain waveform received from a US transmission along a scan-line at a particular angle of the B-mode image (relative to the centre of curvature of the US probe). The signal processing pipeline and tracking algorithm are described in detail in [ 46 ] and are summarised here.…”

Section: Us Needle Tracking (Unt) Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The FOH waveforms in the frame are pre-processed with a matched filter and an envelope detector to maximise the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and reduce jitter in the determination of time-of-flight (a later step in the tracking algorithm). The template signal for the matched filter was synthesised based on observation of the US pulses received by the FOH during tracking, as described in [ 46 ]. The SNR within the frame is then estimated and frames with a poor SNR are discarded.…”

Section: Us Needle Tracking (Unt) Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, if there is sufficient dynamic range, a −6 dB threshold is applied to the energy distribution across the columns of the frame, and then the centre-of-mass (i.e., weighted-mean)

of the thresholded distribution is taken as the angle of the needle tip:

where N is the number of waveforms in the frame,

is the angle of the scan line corresponding to the n th waveform, and

is the energy of the n th waveform in the thresholded frame. The threshold is required to prevent noisy scan-lines introducing a bias to the centre of mass calculation in either angular direction [ 46 ]. An estimate of the uncertainty of this measurement is made by determining the weighted standard deviation of the energy distribution, which is a measure of its angular width:

where

is the number of waveforms with non-zero energy.…”

Section: Us Needle Tracking (Unt) Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Intraoperative Needle Tip Tracking with an Integrated Fibre-Optic Ultrasound Sensor

Baker

Xochicale

Lin

et al. 2022

Sensors

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Ultrasound is an essential tool for guidance of many minimally-invasive surgical and interventional procedures, where accurate placement of the interventional device is critical to avoid adverse events. Needle insertion procedures for anaesthesia, fetal medicine and tumour biopsy are commonly ultrasound-guided, and misplacement of the needle may lead to complications such as nerve damage, organ injury or pregnancy loss. Clear visibility of the needle tip is therefore critical, but visibility is often precluded by tissue heterogeneities or specular reflections from the needle shaft. This paper presents the in vitro and ex vivo accuracy of a new, real-time, ultrasound needle tip tracking system for guidance of fetal interventions. A fibre-optic, Fabry-Pérot interferometer hydrophone is integrated into an intraoperative needle and used to localise the needle tip within a handheld ultrasound field. While previous, related work has been based on research ultrasound systems with bespoke transmission sequences, the new system—developed under the ISO 13485 Medical Devices quality standard—operates as an adjunct to a commercial ultrasound imaging system and therefore provides the image quality expected in the clinic, superimposing a cross-hair onto the ultrasound image at the needle tip position. Tracking accuracy was determined by translating the needle tip to 356 known positions in the ultrasound field of view in a tank of water, and by comparison to manual labelling of the the position of the needle in B-mode US images during an insertion into an ex vivo phantom. In water, the mean distance between tracked and true positions was 0.7 ± 0.4 mm with a mean repeatability of 0.3 ± 0.2 mm. In the tissue phantom, the mean distance between tracked and labelled positions was 1.1 ± 0.7 mm. Tracking performance was found to be independent of needle angle. The study demonstrates the performance and clinical compatibility of ultrasound needle tracking, an essential step towards a first-in-human study.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Us Needle Tracking (Unt) Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Us Needle Tracking (Unt) Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, if there is sufficient dynamic range, a −6 dB threshold is applied to the energy distribution across the columns of the frame, and then the centre-of-mass (i.e., weighted-mean)

of the thresholded distribution is taken as the angle of the needle tip:

where N is the number of waveforms in the frame,

is the angle of the scan line corresponding to the n th waveform, and

where

is the number of waveforms with non-zero energy.…”

Section: Us Needle Tracking (Unt) Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Intraoperative Needle Tip Tracking with an Integrated Fibre-Optic Ultrasound Sensor

Baker

Xochicale

Lin

et al. 2022

Sensors

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“…Compared with ordinary piezoelectric acoustic sensors, fiber optic acoustic sensors (FOAS) have the advantages of strong anti-electromagnetic interference ability, corrosion resistance, and high sensitivity, which make FOAS a unique advantage in the medical field. For example, the hydrophone can be used in the application of ultrasonic acupuncture tracking [1,2] , empty bubble dynamics [3] , and measuring myocardial cell acoustic signals [4] . In some specific occasions, such as MRI, FOAS also has an irreplaceable effect in detecting voice signals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A high sensitivity fiber optic acoustic sensor based on incident-angle sensing: application to detect snoring signals

Cui,

Chen,

Sun

et al. 2023

International Conference on Mechatronics and Intelligent Control (ICMIC 2023)

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Bend‐insensitive fiber optic ultrasonic tracking probe for cardiovascular interventions

et al. 2023

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Background: Transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) is widely used to guide medical device placement in minimally invasive cardiovascular procedures. However, visualization of the device tip with TEE can be challenging. Ultrasonic tracking, enabled by an integrated fiber optic ultrasound sensor (FOUS) that receives transmissions from the TEE probe, is very well suited to improving device localization in this context. The problem addressed in this study is that tight deflections of devices such as a steerable guide catheter can result in bending of the FOUS beyond its specifications and a corresponding loss of ultrasound sensitivity. Purpose: A bend-insensitive FOUS was developed, and its utility with ultrasonic tracking of a steerable tip during TEE-based image guidance was demonstrated. Methods: Fiberoptic ultrasound sensors were fabricated using both standard and bend insensitive single mode fibers and subjected to static bending at the distal end. The interference transfer function and ultrasound sensitivities were compared for both types of FOUS. The bend-insensitive FOUS was integrated within a steerable guide catheter, which served as an exemplar device; the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of tracking signals from the catheter tip with a straight and a fully deflected distal end were measured in a cardiac ultrasound phantom for over 100 frames. Results: With tight bending at the distal end (bend radius < 10 mm), the standard FOUS experienced a complete loss of US sensitivity due to high attenuation in the fiber, whereas the bend-insensitive FOUS had largely unchanged performance, with a SNR of 47.7 for straight fiber and a SNR of 36.8 at a bend radius of 3.0 mm. When integrated into the steerable guide catheter, the mean SNRs of the ultrasonic tracking signals recorded with the catheter in a cardiac phantom were similar for straight and fully deflected distal ends: 195 and 163. Conclusion:The FOUS fabricated from bend-insensitive fiber overcomes the bend restrictions associated with the FOUS fabricated from standard single mode fiber, thereby enabling its use in ultrasonic tracking in a wide range of cardiovascular devices. K E Y W O R D S bend-insensitive fiber, cardiovascular interventions, fiber optic ultrasound sensor, transesophageal electrocardiography, ultrasonic trackingThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Real-Time Ultrasonic Tracking of an Intraoperative Needle Tip with Integrated Fibre-Optic Hydrophone

Cited by 4 publications

References 16 publications

Intraoperative Needle Tip Tracking with an Integrated Fibre-Optic Ultrasound Sensor

Intraoperative Needle Tip Tracking with an Integrated Fibre-Optic Ultrasound Sensor

A high sensitivity fiber optic acoustic sensor based on incident-angle sensing: application to detect snoring signals

Bend‐insensitive fiber optic ultrasonic tracking probe for cardiovascular interventions

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