Intermittent Insertion Control Method with Fine Needle for Adapting Lung Deformation due to Breathing Motion

Fine needle insertions into a lung are challenging in terms of the needle deflection due to the breathing motion. Although previous related works neglected the effect for the needle deflection due to the breathing motion by patients stopping the breath during the insertion, they have to suffer from the discomfort. This paper proposes the intermittent insertion control method to decrease needle deflection adapting the lung deformation due to the breathing motion. The novelty of this method is to allow for accurate needle insertion without stopping the breath, which will contribute to decreasing the discomfort and the amount of radiation exposure for patients. The intermittent insertion is to move forward the fine needle during a certain time frame that the needle deflection barely occurs since the lung is not deformed by the diaphragm motion. The feasibility of the proposed method was validated through a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) phantom and ex vivo experiments. The results showed that the deflection can be suppressed up to 1.3 mm and 3.9 mm in the PVC phantom and ex vivo experiments, respectively.