Flexible Needle Steering using Ultrasound Visual Servoing

Abstract

The robotic guidance of a needle has been the subject of a lot of research works these past years to provide an assistance to clinicians during medical needle insertion procedures. However, the accurate and robust control of a needle insertion robotic system remains a great challenge due to the complex interaction between a flexible needle and soft tissues as well as the difficulty to localize the needle in medical images. In this thesis we focus on the ultrasound-guided robotic control of the trajectory of a flexible needle with a beveled-tip. We propose a 3D model of the interaction between the needle and the tissues as well as a needle tracking method in a sequence of 3D ultrasound volumes that uses the artifacts appearing around the needle. Both are combined in order to obtain good performances for the tracking and the modeling of the needle even when motions of the tissues can be observed. We also develop a control framework based on visual servoing which can be adapted to the steering of several kinds of needle-shaped tools. This framework allows an accurate placement of the needle tip and the compensation of the physiological motions of the patient. Experimental results are provided and demonstrate the performances of the different methods that we propose.