Towards physiological motion compensation for flexible needle interventions

Flexible bevel-tipped needle steering has been an active research topic since the last decade. However, most of the work presented so far performs flexible needle steering in static phantoms or non-static virtual environments. The insertion of flexible bevel-tipped needles into soft-tissue subjected to motion disturbances is still an open research problem. In this paper, we propose a flexible needle steering algorithm that is able to handle physiological motion disturbances. The system estimates the disturbance using the force information provided by a force sensor placed in contact with the soft-tissue. The system is evaluated through experiments steering a flexible needle towards a physical target into a moving soft-tissue phantom. Three experimental cases with motion disturbances based on clinical procedures in the lung, kidney and heart are used to assess the targeting error. The average targeting error of all 15 experimental trials is 1:05±0:41mm. Our results demonstrate the ability of the proposed system to compensate for motion disturbances applied to the soft-tissue phantom.