A Single Hydraulic Bellows-Based MRI-Safe Robotic Needle Driver Capable of Independent and Coupled Needle Translation and Rotation
Yufu Qiu, haiyang fang, Kwan Kit Lin, Shing Shin Cheng
AI summary
Problem
Existing MRI-compatible needle drivers struggle to simultaneously achieve high compactness, large insertion force, and versatile motion capabilities, restricting their use in constrained in-bore or body-mounted surgical setups.
Approach
The authors designed a 3.8 cm tall, fully non-metallic needle driver driven by a single hydraulic bellows actuator, incorporating a pre-clamped gripper, passive rotation mechanism, and a decoupling system to enable independent and coupled needle motions under adaptive fuzzy control.
Key results
- Achieves 3.8 cm height and >10 N insertion force with a single hydraulic bellows actuator
- Enables independent translation, coupled translation-rotation, and independent rotation via a passive decoupling mechanism
- Delivers <0.06 mm overshoot and 0.17 mm RMS repeatability using an adaptive elastic fuzzy controller
- Demonstrates full MR-safety with non-metallic, non-magnetic components for in-bore integration
Why it matters
Enables real-time, in-bore MRI-guided percutaneous procedures with improved workflow efficiency and greater potential for autonomous needle steering.
Abstract
Despite decades of research in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-compatible robotic technologies, the existing MRI-safe needle drivers rarely feature simultaneously high compactness, large insertion force, and motion versatility, all of which are critical to facilitate clinical translation in intraoperative MRI-guided percutaneous procedures. The paper presents an MR-safe needle driver that for the first time offers all these desired qualities. It measures only 2.2 × 5.3 × 3.8 cm (length × width × height), facilitating its adoption in in-bore skull- mounted or body-mounted MRI-guided procedures. It is driven by a single hydraulic bellows-based actuator, which provides good water sealing, smooth motion, and high expansion ratio, and a pre-clamped gripper design that offers large insertion force (>10 N). A compact passive rotation mechanism, together with a motion decoupling and switching mechanism, was introduced, allowing the needle to move with three motion types: independent translation, translation with passive rotation, and independent rotation. The passive rotation motion reduces needle deformation and tissue resistance during insertion, while the combination of independent translation and independent rotation enables flexible needle steering. An adaptive elastic fuzzy controller was further developed to address the limitation of encoder resolution and the unknown nonlinear dynamics of the hydraulic bellows- based actuator to provide accurate needle tip control (<0.06 mm overshoot and 0.17 mm root-mean-square repeatability error). The compact and highly versatile needle driver design with its high motion accuracy represents a significant breakthrough in MRI-safe robotic technology, facilitating in-bore real-time MRI- guided interventions that could save MRI operation time, improve workflow efficiency, and enable more autonomy integration.