A haptic interface for simulation of needle inervention

Abstract

Needle intervention is minimally invasive image guided procedures that diagnose and treat diseases using needle. In this procedures, needle tip is placed on some point on the skin and then inserted until it reaches to the target point inside of the body. The key point of this procedures is exact placement of needle tip at the target, not touching other organs, vessels and nerves. But it is not that easy because of movements caused by breath of a patient and absence of direct visibility inside of the body. So needle intervention requires some training before performing actual procedures. Although, there are other ways to train the procedure, one of preferable way is training simulator. The efficiency of training simulator depends on its contents. It should include the factors that are required to train in the procedures. In needle intervention one of important factor is force sensation. Since the needle intervention is a procedure that has limited visibility, the force becomes one of the important guidelines that provides information about invisible site. Understanding the force difference by layer to layer affects the efficiency of the procedure. Based on this background, this thesis is aims at developing a haptic interface for needle intervention training simulator. The design and requirements of the haptic interface are decided by analyzing the procedures. It provides 5 degrees of freedom motions including 1 translation, 2 rotations, and 2 translations. 1 translation provides force feedback during needle insertion. To make the device familiar to the doctor, actual needle is selected as an end-effector. 2 rotations provide spherical workspace and also force feedback. The point of rotational part is to reduce the force felt during rotation. So gravity compensation is required to minimize the sensed force. 2 translation provide plane motion of the whole device. These additional degrees of freedom are to train the technique to push the skin for angular change ...