Needle-tissue interaction forces for bevel-tip steerable needles

The asymmetry of a bevel-tip needle results in the needle naturally bending when it is inserted into soft tissue. As a first step toward modeling the mechanics of deflection of the needle, we determine the forces at the bevel tip. In order to find the forces acting at the needle tip, we measure rupture toughness and nonlinear material elasticity parameters of several soft tissue simulant gels and chicken tissue. We incorporate these physical parameters into a finite element model that includes both contact and cohesive zone models to simulate tissue cleavage. We investigate the sensitivity of the tip forces to tissue rupture toughness, linear and nonlinear tissue elasticity, and needle tip bevel angle. The model shows that the tip forces are sensitive to the rupture toughness. The results from these studies contribute to a mechanics-based model of bevel-tip needle steering, extending previous work on kinematic models.