A workspace-orientated needle-guiding robot for 3T MRI-guided transperineal prostate intervention: Evaluation of in-bore workspace and MRI compatibility - Abstract

BACKGROUND:Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided prostate interventions have been introduced to enhance the cancer detection.

For accurate needle positioning, in-bore-operated robotic systems have been developed and optimal use of the confined in-bore space become a critical engineering challenge.

METHODS: As preliminary evaluation of our prostate intervention robot, we conducted a workspace design analysis, using a new evaluation method that we developed for in-bore-operated robots for transperineal prostate interventions, and an MRI compatibility study.

RESULTS: The workspace analysis resulted in the effective workspace (VW ) of 0.32, which is greater than that of our early prototype, despite the current robot being ca. 50% larger than the early prototype in sectional space. The MRI compatibility study resulted in < 15% signal:noise ratio (SNR) reduction.

CONCLUSIONS: The new workspace evaluation method quantifies the workspace utilization of the in-bore-operated robots for MRI-guided transperineal prostate interventions, providing a useful tool for evaluation and new robot design. The robot creates insignificant electromagnetic noise during typical prostate imaging sequences.

Written by:
Song SE, Hata N, Iordachita I, Fichtinger G, Tempany C, Tokuda J. Are you the author?
National Center for Image-Guided Therapy, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.

Reference: Int J Med Robot. 2012 Apr 10. Epub ahead of print.
doi: 10.1002/rcs.1430

PubMed Abstract
PMID: 22492680

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