Dispositivo robótico para guiagem de agulhas flexíveis em procedimentos minimamente invasivos

Author: André Augusto Geraldes Supervisor: Prof. Antônio Padilha Lanari Bó, ENE/UnB Graduate Program in Electronic Systems Engineering and Automation – PGEA Brasília, 25th September 2015 Flexible needles represent a novel technology in minimally invasive surgery. Due to their ability to bend inside soft tissue, they have the potential to increase the performance of several surgical procedures, however the precise positioning of this kind of needles remains a challenge to be solved by the scientific community. In this context, this work presents a novel robotic device for flexible needle steering. This device uses a discrete insertion approach, in order to solve existing problems of the Telescoping Support Device, considered the state of the art. The development of this device comprises an original mechanical design as well as the electronics and software systems required to control the needle insertion. In vitro experiments allowed to quantify the open loop performance of the developed system and to compare it to the state of the art. The obtained results showed that the novel device has more accuracy, resulting in a 35% decrease on the mean positioning error, but it is 4 times less precise. The performed experiments also allowed identifying mechanical issues with the manufactured device, which had a negative impact in its performance. The correction of these issues should increase the precision of the developed device, however this modifications are left for future work.