8 accepted papers
Ultrasound (US)-guided needle insertion is a critical yet challenging procedure due to dynamic imaging conditions and difficulties in needle visualization. Many methods have been proposed for automated needle insertion, but they often rely on hand-crafted pipelines with modular controllers, whose pe…
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is increasingly used for robotic needle-based clinical diagnosis and therapy due to its high resolution and high soft tissue contrast. A needle driver therefore becomes an essential part of these MRI -guided robotic systems to perform in-bore needle placement under c…
Ultrasound (US) is widely used in image-guided needle procedures. Correctly tracking the needle tip position in US images during the procedure plays an important role in improving the needle targeting accuracy and patient safety. This paper presents a leaning-based visual tracking network with a Sia…
Transoral robotic surgery (TORS) in upper aerodigestive tract remains challenging due to the rigidity and insufficient workspace of existing instruments, and inappropriate balance between compliance and stiffness in flexible instruments. In this letter, a flexible surgical robotic instrument, featur
Ultrasound (US) is commonly used in percutaneous needle procedures for real-time guidance. Accurate and robust automatic needle tracking is highly desirable to address the influence of noise and artifacts in US images. This letter presents a tracking approach which combines an improved compressive t
Most existing surgical robots employ straight rigid instruments and are not compatible with imaging modalities, especially magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that presents restrictive constraints on the robot and actuator materials. Employing continuum distal end effector and fulfilling multi-imager c…
Pericardiocentesis is the drainage of excessive fluid in the pericardium surrounding the heart under ultrasound guidance. The percutaneous procedure comes with the risk of cardiac perforation since the needle is inserted towards the beating heart. This letter presents a novel percutaneous robot that
The letter presents a compact shape memory alloy (SMA)-actuated magnetic resonance (MR)-conditional neurosurgical robotic system. It consists of a 2-degree of freedom (DoF) cable-driven steerable end effector, an antagonistic SMA springs-based actuation module, and a quick-connect module, packaged i