A meshless framework for bevel-tip flexible needle insertion through soft tissue

Flexible needle offers greater mobility and maneuverability in minimally invasive procedures. However, its nonholonomic property and complicated interactions with soft tissues makes accurate insertion and motion planning for this type of needle still a challenge. Realistically modeling and simulating its insertion through a soft tissue will provide many information to enhance the motion planning and control of the flexible needle.This paper presents a meshless framework for modeling and simulation of flexible needle insertion through soft tissue. Instead of using elements to represent the needle and soft tissue as in most existing FEM-based methods, which are connected with meshes, our approach uses two separated sets of nodes to represent them. Structure constraints as used in FEM-based methods have been released, and the needle interacts with the soft tissue using a moving least square approximation. Since no mesh is required in this approach, no remeshing or mesh modification is needed for both accuracy refinement and tissue-needle interaction. Finally, simulations results are provided to validate the performance of our approach.