Robotic Puncture Research Articles

Semi-automatic robotic puncture system based on deformable soft tissue point cloud registration.

Traditional surgical puncture robot systems based on computed tomography (CT) and infrared camera guidance have natural disadvantages for puncture of deformable soft tissues such as the liver. Liver movement and deformation caused by breathing are difficult to accurately assess and compensate by current technical solutions. We propose a semi-automatic robotic puncture system based on real-time ultrasound images to solve this problem. Real-time ultrasound images and their spatial position information can be obtained by robot in this system. By recognizing target tissue in these ultrasound images and using reconstruction algorithm, 3D real-time ultrasound tissue point cloud can be constructed. Point cloud of the target tissue in the CT image can be obtained by using developed software. Through the point cloud registration method based on feature points, two point clouds above are registered. The puncture target will be automatically positioned, then robot quickly carries the puncture guide mechanism to the puncture site and guides the puncture. It takes about just tens of seconds from the start of image acquisition to completion of needle insertion. Patient can be controlled by a ventilator to temporarily stop breathing, and patient's breathing state does not need to be the same as taking CT scan. The average operation time of 24 phantom experiments is 64.5 s, and the average error between the needle tip and the target point after puncture is 0.8mm. Two animal puncture surgeries were performed, and the results indicated that the puncture errors of these two experiments are 1.76mm and 1.81mm, respectively. Robot system can effectively carry out and implement liver tissue puncture surgery, and the success rate of phantom experiments and experiments is 100%. It also shows that the puncture robot system has high puncture accuracy, short operation time, and great clinical value.

A fast, accurate and uncalibrated robotic puncture method

AbstractBackgroundRobotic puncture system (RPS) consists of an optical tracking system (OTS) and a robotic arm gripping the puncture needle. Typically, the RPS requires hand‐eye calibration before the surgery in order to obtain the relative position between the OTS and the robotic arm. However, if there is any displacement or angular deviation in either the robotic arm or the OTS, the calibration results become invalid, necessitating recalibration.MethodsWe propose an uncalibrated robotic puncture method that does not rely on the hand‐eye relationship of the RPS. By constructing angle and position graph jacobian matrices respectively, and employing Square Root Cubature Kalman Filter for online estimation. This enables obtaining control variables for the robot to perform puncture operations.ResultsIn simulation experiments, our method achieves an average error of 1.3495 mm and an average time consumption of 39.331 s.ConclusionsExperimental results indicate that our method possesses high accuracy, low time consumption, and strong robustness.

Robotic-assisted versus manual Uro Dyna-CT-guided puncture in an ex-vivo kidney phantom

Introduction and objectives Challenging percutaneous renal punctures to gain access to the kidney requiring guidance by cross-sectional imaging. To test the feasibility of robotic-assisted CT-guided punctures (RP) and compare them with manual laser-guided punctures (MP) with Uro Dyna-CT (Siemens Healthcare Solutions, Erlangen, Germany). Material and methods The silicon kidney phantom contained target lesions of three sizes. RP were performed using a robotic assistance system (guidoo, BEC GmbH, Pfullingen, Germany) with a robotic arm (LBR med R800, KUKA AG, Augsburg, Germany) and a navigation software with a cone-beam-CT Artis zeego (Siemens Healthcare GmbH, Erlangen, Germany). MP were performed using the syngo iGuide Uro-Dyna Artis Zee Ceiling CT (Siemens Healthcare Solutions). Three urologists with varying experience performed 20 punctures each. Success rate, puncture accuracy, puncture planning time (PPT), and needle placement time (NPT) were measured and compared with ANOVA and Chi-Square Test. Results One hundred eighteen punctures with a success rate of 100% for RP and 78% for MP were included. Puncture accuracy was significantly higher for RP. PPT (RP: 238 ± 90s, MP: 104 ± 21s) and NPT (RP: 128 ± 40s, MP: 81 ± 18s) were significantly longer for RP. The outcome variables did not differ significantly with regard to levels of investigators’ experience. Conclusion The accuracy of RP was superior to that of MP. This study paves the way for first in-human application of this robotic puncture system.

Application of Medical Image Navigation Technology in Minimally Invasive Puncture Robot.

Microneedle puncture is a standard minimally invasive treatment and surgical method, which is widely used in extracting blood, tissues, and their secretions for pathological examination, needle-puncture-directed drug therapy, local anaesthesia, microwave ablation needle therapy, radiotherapy, and other procedures. The use of robots for microneedle puncture has become a worldwide research hotspot, and medical imaging navigation technology plays an essential role in preoperative robotic puncture path planning, intraoperative assisted puncture, and surgical efficacy detection. This paper introduces medical imaging technology and minimally invasive puncture robots, reviews the current status of research on the application of medical imaging navigation technology in minimally invasive puncture robots, and points out its future development trends and challenges.

An Uncalibrated and Accurate Robotic Puncture Method Under Respiratory Motion

Robotic puncture system (RPS) has been widely concerned in thoracoabdominal puncture surgery, but it usually requires cumbersome hand-eye calibration (HEC) to ensure accuracy. An uncalibrated and accurate robotic puncture method under respiratory motion is proposed to determine the relationship between the manipulator and optical tracking system (OTS) in real-time. This method explored RPS to achieve the accurate location of angle and position without calibration respectively, and constructed the angle Jacobian matrix and position Jacobian matrix. An efficient approach that used Square-Root Unscented Kalman Filter (SR-UKF) to online estimate the Jacobian matrices of the RPS was presented. Moreover, this method is less time-consuming and can achieve a dynamic following, making it more efficient. Experimental studies on our designed RPS show that the proposed method has good accuracy and robustness in angle and position location; the average error of puncture results on the respiratory simulation model is 2.2382mm, which can meet the accuracy requirements of the actual thoracoabdominal puncture surgery.

This Month in Adult Urology

This Month in Adult Urology

A robotic puncture system with optical and mechanical feedback under respiratory motion.

Puncture robot can improve the accuracy and efficiency of puncture surgery, such as thoracoabdominal and liver puncture. However, as soft tissue is deformed and shifted under respiratory motion and during the puncture process, the needle is pulled, resulting in the needle's bending and deformation, which increases the risks and sufferings of the patient, a robotic puncture system with optical and mechanical feedback is necessary. Therefore, this paper proposes a multi-information sensing 'guide-clamp' end effector for puncture surgery to accurately detect the posture and force on the puncture needle in real time. And gravity bias method with trajectory planning and the compensational controlling model are also proposed to offset the interference of self-weight and achieve zero force following. This system is evaluated by the experiments of robot controlling and human tissue simulation and the results prove the excellent robustness of the system, which meet the clinical requirement.

A Dual-Armed Robotic Puncture System: Design, Implementation and Preliminary Tests

Traditional renal puncture surgery requires manual operation, which has a poor puncture effect, low surgical success rate, and high incidence of postoperative complications. Robot-assisted puncture surgery can effectively improve the accuracy of punctures, improve the success rate of surgery, and reduce the occurrence of postoperative complications. This paper provides a dual-armed robotic puncture scheme to assist surgeons. The system is divided into an ultrasound scanning arm and a puncture arm. Both robotic arms with a compliant positioning function and master–slave control function are designed, respectively, and the control system is achieved. The puncture arm’s position and posture are decoupled by the wrist RCM mechanism and the arm decoupling mechanism. According to the independent joint control principle, the compliant positioning function is realized based on the single-joint human–computer interactive admittance control. The simulation and tests verify its functions and performance. The differential motion incremental master–slave mapping strategy is used to realize the master–slave control function. The error feedback link is introduced to solve the cumulative error problem in the master–slave control. The dual-armed robotic puncture system prototype is established and animal tests verify the effectiveness.

A multiple closed-loops robotic calibration for accurate surgical puncture.

Robotic puncture system increasingly demands stringent standard in target location accuracy. The positional and orientational transformation relationships among all components of the system are supposed to be calibrated and identified preoperatively. The target location performance is directly determined by the calibration result. Therefore, a multiple closed-loops calibration approach is proposed to achieve high-level calibration accuracy in robotic puncture system. MATERIALS& METHODS: This method takes as input the three-dimensional position information of the retro-reflective markers mounted on the surgical tool, which is detected by the optical tracking system in real time during robotic movement. There is less complicated mathematical derivation and calculation in the presented algorithm by applying the closed-loop principle. Experimental results validate that it can achieve accurate robotic target location with less input data and computation-cost, satisfying the clinical puncture requirements. The spatial calibration between robotic arm and optical tracking system efficiently realised by the presented approach present an alternative which can be safely applied to the robotic puncture system for accurate insertion. Overall, a multiple closed-loops calibration approach is proposed in this work, which may increase surgical efficiency.

Target localization during respiration motion based on LSTM: A pilot study on robotic puncture system

In the needle biopsy, the respiratory motion causes the displacement of thoracic-abdominal soft tissues, which brings great difficulty to accurate localization. Based on internal target motion and external marker motion, the existing methods need to establish a correlation model or a prediction model to compensate the respiratory movement, which can hardly achieve required accuracy in clinic use due to the complexity of the internal tissue motion. In order to improve the tracking accuracy and reduce the number of models, we propose a framework for target localization based on long short-term memory (LSTM) method. Combined with the correlation model and the prediction model by using LSTM, we adopted the principal component of time-series features of external surrogate signals to predict the trajectory of the internal tumour target. Additionally, based on the electromagnetic tracking system and Universal Robots 3 robotic arm, we applied the proposed approach to a prototype of robotic puncture system for real-time tumour tracking. To verify the proposed method, experiments on both public datasets and customized motion phantom for respiratory simulation were performed. In the public dataset study, an average mean absolute error, and an average root-mean-square error of predictive results of 0.44 and 0.58 mm were achieved, respectively. In the motion phantom study, an average root mean square of puncturing error resulted in 0.65 mm. The experimental results demonstrate the proposed method improves the accuracy of target localization during respiratory movement and appeals the potentials applying to clinical application.

Experimental study of the optimum puncture pattern of robot-assisted needle insertion into hyperelastic materials.

The robot-assisted insertion surgery plays a crucial role in biopsy and therapy. This study focuses on determining the optimum puncture pattern for robot-assisted insertion, aiming at the matching problem of needle insertion parameters, thereby to reduce the pain for patients and to improve the reachability to the lesion point. First, a 6-degrees of freedom (DOFs) Computed Tomography (CT)-guided surgical robotic system for minimally invasive percutaneous lung is developed and used to perform puncture experiments. The effects of four main insertion factors on the robotic puncture are verified by designing the orthogonal test, where the inserting object is the artificial skin-like specimen with high transparent property and a digital image processing method is used to analyze the needle tip deflection. Next, the various phases of puncture process are divided and analyzed in detail in view of the tissue deformation and puncture force. Then, short discussion on the comparison of puncture force with different effect factors for the same beveled needle is presented. The same pattern can be observed for all of the cases. Finally, based on the experimental data, the formulations of the puncture force and needle deflection which depends on Gauge size, insertion velocity, insertion angle, and insertion depth are developed using the multiple regression method, which can be used to get an optimum puncture pattern under the constrains of minimum peak force and minimum needle tip deflection. The developed models have the effectiveness and applicability on determining the optimum puncture pattern for one puncture event, and which can also provide insights useful for the setting of insertion parameters in clinical practice.

Maxwell-Model-Based Compliance Control for Human–Robot Friendly Interaction

This article explores an alternative design philosophy of compliance control for safe and friendly human-robot interaction. Conventional approaches are based on the Voigt model with spring and damper connected in parallel. The theoretical and experimental results of disciplines other than robotics (e.g., mechanics of materials and elastoplastic mechanics) show that the Maxwell model has the merit of removing the elastic return force and reducing the effect of collisions with respect to the Voigt model. Therefore, the authors are motivated to exploit the advantages of the Maxwell model in reactions to human interactions and develop a series of Maxwell model-based compliance control methodologies, which only require kinematic control interfaces. First, a Maxwell model-based Cartesian admittance control scheme is presented to produce a novel plastic compliance of robot end effector. Moreover, we present a Maxwell model-based null space admittance control approach for manipulators with redundancy to achieve a novel plastic whole body compliance. We have evaluated the effectiveness and generalizability of the proposed methods by extensive comparative experiments on human-robot cooperative tasks in various sectors, including domestic, part assembly, and robotic puncture surgery. Our approaches can be viewed as a new and comfortable interface of physical human-robot interaction and collaboration.

A Novel Respiratory Follow-Up Robotic System for Thoracic-Abdominal Puncture

The application of robotic puncture system in thoracic-abdominal puncture (TAP) surgery has been hindered by the undistinguished accuracy on account of the respiratory motion. In order to mitigate this challenge, a respiratory follow-up robotic system (RFRS) is designed for accurate surgical puncture. Notably, a control strategy on robotic puncture is proposed to compensate the tissue deformation under the effect of clinical respiration. With the real-time analysis of breathing motion, the movement of robotic arm is composed by follow-up compensation related to respiratory motion and insertion toward the target. An online target location model proposed here aims to restrict the surgical instrument overlapped with the planned target, increasing the accuracy, safety, flexibility, and agility of puncture procedures. Experimental results suggest that the presented system achieved outperforming accuracy, movement capabilities, and robustness. It is promising that the RFRS will be effective in TAP by analyzing breathing motion for tissue deformation compensation.

Automatic Robotic Puncture System for Accurate Liver Cancer Ablation Based on Optical Surgical Navigation

This paper designed an automatic robotic puncture system for accurate liver cancer ablation based on optical surgical navigation. The near-infrared optical surgical navigation system we constructed for liver ablation was applied to carry out surgical planning and simulation, the near-infrared cameras dynamically tracked the current position of puncture needle relative to the location of the patient's anatomy, then guided the surgery robot to position precisely in three-dimensional space and performed the surgery.