The robot system of radio frequency ablation based on ultrasound navigation

Abstract

The ultrasonic image guided radio frequency ablation surgery is an effective technique in liver tumour treatment. However, the traditional surgery imposes a constraint for surgeons to have high precision in their hand-eye coordination. This paper discusses the design of an assisted medical robot system to reduce these requirements, the needle driven robot system consists of needle-driven robot, 3D model navigation and a magnetic tracker. In the pre-operative phase, 3D model of the liver tumor is reconstructed and the needle insertion path is planed. In the intra-operative phase, the surgeon matches the pre-operative 3D model of the liver with real patient liver. Then, the needle-driven robot moves accurately at the target point where the surgeon inserts the needle into the liver tumour to destroy the tumor with microwave coagulation. A small and compact medical robot is proposed based on workspace optimization in this paper. Experimental results show that the robot location errors are less than 0.2mm, the robot ultrasound navigation system errors are less than 2.5 mm.