Intelligent Needle Steering

The long term goal of this work is to harness the effect of bevel tip needle bending to provide accurate, dexterous targeting for percutaneous therapies. New results in needle and tissue modeling, combined with robot motion modeling, will facilitate new models, hardware, control, and planning techniques for steering exible needles inside soft tissue.
Using path planning, control, and kinematics results from the field of robotics, we plan to demonstrate that an appropriately designed needle can be steered through tissue to reach a specified 3-D target. Even more compelling is that the methods we propose will allow needles to be steered to previously inaccessible locations in the body, enabling new minimally invasive procedures.