Design and control of a novel magnetic resonance imaging-compatible breast intervention robot

Mingyue Lu,Haiyan Du,Yongde Zhang

doi:10.1177/1729881420927853

Abstract

Breast cancer is one of the most frequent cancers and a major cause of cancer death in women. In this article, the design and control of a novel magnetic resonance imaging-compatible breast intervention robot are proposed. The dimensions and tolerance of the robot system are considered, and a novel pitching mechanism is designed to achieve a dexterous operation in the limited space. The magnetic resonance imaging compatibility of the robot materials is tested. The nonmagnetic structure and compact Cartesian mechanism of the robot allow it to operate safely in a magnetic resonance imaging scanner. According to the robot’s structure, a kinematics analysis based on a coupled motions model is established. The workspace simulation analysis of the robot proves that it is suitable for the whole breast surgery. To control the needle insertion tasks, the overall control system in the form of “personal computer (PC) + single-chip micyoco (SCM)” is designed. Finally, the motion control experiment is carried out, and the robot positioning error is 0.37 mm, which proves that the breast intervention robot and its control system designed in this article can meet the requirements of breast intervention.

Highlights

The incidence of breast cancer is increasing and the age of patients has tended to be younger in recent years.1 Breast cancer is the major cause of cancer death for females from the age of 15 to 54 years.2 If breast cancer is detected at the beginning stage, patients can often be cured.3,4 As an early detection method, a breast biopsy extracts and analyses sample tissues by inserting a needle into the suspicious areas under the guidance of images, which is used to confirm whether the tissue is cancerous or not
Repeated operations will increase the trauma inflicted to the tissues. It is of great significance and practical value to design a breast intervention robot that can achieve a dexterous operation in a limited space with a compact structure, material compatibility, and high precision
The main characteristics embodied in the design of the pitching mechanism that based on the improved Cartesian coordinate form are structural stability, high precision, compact structure, and short posture adjusting time

Summary

Introduction

The incidence of breast cancer is increasing and the age of patients has tended to be younger in recent years. Breast cancer is the major cause of cancer death for females from the age of 15 to 54 years. If breast cancer is detected at the beginning stage, patients can often be cured. As an early detection method, a breast biopsy extracts and analyses sample tissues by inserting a needle into the suspicious areas under the guidance of images, which is used to confirm whether the tissue is cancerous or not. Park et al developed an MRI-compatible robotic intervention system that incorporates a bendable needle intervention robot for breast cancer patients to overcome the space limitations of the MRI scanner.. Navarro-Alarcon et al presented the development of a new three-degree-offreedom (3-DOF) robotic system has a Cartesian mechanism for an MRI-guided breast biopsy and conducted several motion control and magnetic compatibility experiments.. According to a comprehensive analysis of present situations, it can be ascertained that there are three main technical problems in the development of MRI-compatible breast intervention robots. Repeated operations will increase the trauma inflicted to the tissues For these problems, it is of great significance and practical value to design a breast intervention robot that can achieve a dexterous operation in a limited space with a compact structure, material compatibility, and high precision. We introduce a novel MRI-compatible breast intervention robot and its control system that is intended to form the basis for a breast biopsy robot

Design of the breast intervention robot

Conclusions