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Precisely positioning the tip of an instrument inserted through an orifice with a free wrist robot: application to prostate biopsies

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International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Robots with a spherical unactuated wrist can be used for minimally invasive surgery. With such a robot, positioning the wrist center controls the instrument tip position when assuming that the insertion site behaves like a lever with a fixed and known fulcrum. In practice, this assumption is not always respected. In this paper we first study the practical consequences of this problem in terms of tip precision positioning. We then propose a robotic control scheme that improves the precision compared to the fixed point assumption approach.

Methods

In the first part of the paper, data recorded during robot-assisted transrectal needle positioning for prostate biopsies (nine patients) are exploited to quantify the positioning error induced by the use of a fixed point hypothesis in the positioning process. In the second part of the paper advanced control techniques allow for the online identification of a locally linear system that describes a model characterized by anisotropy and center displacement. A laboratory apparatus is used to demonstrate the resulting improvement on tip positioning precision.

Results

Errors obtained by processing the clinical data reach 7.5 mm at the tip in average. Errors obtained with the laboratory apparatus drop from 2.4 mm in average to 0.8 mm when using real-time model update.

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Funding

This work has been partially supported by the French state funds managed by the BPI within the FUI’17-MIRAS project and through the funds managed by the ANR within the Investissements d’Avenir program (Labex CAMI) under reference ANR-11-LABX-0004.

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Correspondence to Rémi Chalard.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

The research protocol for a clinical trial was authorized by the sponsor of the clinical study (Grenoble University Hospital) and the relevant legal authorities through the reference PROSBOT-Apollo Biopsies assisted by co-manipulated robot-Pilot Clinical trial; 2015; Acceptance number NCT02132975.

Human and animal rights

This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Chalard, R., Reversat, D., Morel, G. et al. Precisely positioning the tip of an instrument inserted through an orifice with a free wrist robot: application to prostate biopsies. Int J CARS 13, 611–618 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-018-1718-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-018-1718-6

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