LPR: A CT and MR-Compatible Puncture Robot to Enhance Accuracy and Safety of Image-Guided Interventions

Image-guided percutaneous interventions are common procedures used for diagnosis or therapeutic purposes. The clinical demand for such interventions is growing since they are minimally invasive. To increase the quality of the operations and provide optimal accuracy and safety to patients, puncture robots may be very helpful. This paper presents a new robotic architecture designed to perform abdominal and thoracic punctures under computer tomography (CT) or MRI guidance. Innovations concerning the robotic architecture, materials, and energy sources are described. Segmentation and registration algorithms have been developed to localize the robot on images coming from CT or MRI devices, and a specific control loop is used to verify the movements and the positioning of the robot. The results of the initial experiments made under CT and MRI environments are presented.