Towards an Articulated Needle

Abstract

Needle is a kind of basic medical instruments in minimally invasive surgery. A thin and long needle is inserted into a human body through the skin to perform diagnosis and treatment tasks. In order to improve the steerability of a needle, articulated needle is proposed in this paper. An articulated needle consists of a head with a bevel-tip, several articulations and several sections. Articulations are much easier to be bent, which allows proposed articulated needle to be more easily controlled to achieve a complex curved trajectory. The structure of the articulated needle is investigated for improving its bending performance. The influences of the angle of bevel-tip, the sectional dimension of sections, the number of articulations, the maximum bending angle of articulations, and the distribution of articulations on the bending performance of the needle are studied, which provide the basis for path planning and navigation of an articulated needle.