A Fully Actuated Robotic Assistant for MRI-Guided Precision Conformal Ablation of Brain Tumors

This article reports the development of a fully actuated robotic assistant for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) guided precision conformal ablation of brain tumors using an interstitial high-intensity needle-based therapeutic ultrasound ablator probe. The robot is designed with an eight degree-of-freedom (8-DOF) remote center of motion manipulator driven by piezoelectric actuators, five for aligning the ultrasound thermal ablator to the target lesions, and three for inserting and orienting the ablator and its cannula to generate a desired ablation profile. The 8-DOF fully actuated robot can be operated in the scanner bore during imaging; thus, alleviating the need for moving the patient in or out of the scanner during the procedure, and therefore potentially reducing the procedure time and streamlining the workflow. The free space positioning accuracy of the system is evaluated with the OptiTrack motion capture system, demonstrating the root-mean-square (RMS) error of the tip position to be 1.11 ± 0.43 mm. The system targeting accuracy in MRI is assessed with phantom studies, indicating the RMS errors of the tip position to be 1.45 ± 0.66 mm and orientation to be 1.53±0.69°. The feasibility of the system to perform thermal ablation is validated through a preliminary ex-vivo tissue study with position error less than 4.3 mm and orientation error less than 4.3°.