Path planning for insertion of a bevel tip steerable needle into a soft tissue in the presence of obstacles

In this paper, the problem of path planning for needle insertion into a soft tissue is considered. A new method is proposed which does not have the disadvantage and difficulties of the previous methods, namely disability in modeling short distances or 3D path planning complexities. In the proposed method by dividing the primary path into short plane paths and assuming a point near each obstacle as their goals, the problem is converted into 2D cases. Two control inputs, insertion velocity and tip rotation angle around the shaft, are used to determine the motion of the needle. In order to avoid obstacles in work plane, a nonholonomic bicycle model for the needle is proposed, using the inverse kinematics algorithm. The simulation results are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed method as compared to that of the existing method.