6 accepted papers
Percutaneous needle insertions are commonly performed for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes as an effective alternative to more invasive surgical procedures. However, the outcome of needle-based approaches relies heavily on the accuracy of needle placement, which remains a challenge even with robo…
An <i>in situ</i> needle manipulation technique used by physicians when performing spinal injections is modeled to study its effect on needle shape and needle tip position. A mechanics-based model is proposed and solved using finite element method. A test setup is presented to mimic the needle manip
Malaria is a worldwide scourge, and the broad deployment of an effective vaccine would improve the lives of millions of people. A vaccine based on Plasmodium falciparum (PfSPZ) sporozoites extracted from the salivary glands of infected mosquitoes shows significant promise. However, the large-scale i…
Lumbar injection is an image-guided procedure performed manually for diagnosis and treatment of lower back pain and leg pain. Previously, we have developed and verified an MR-Conditional robotic solution to assisting the needle insertion process. Drawing on our clinical experiences, a virtual remote…
This paper reports the improved design, system integration, and initial experimental evaluation of a fully actuated body-mounted robotic system for real-time MRI-guided lower back pain injections. The 6-DOF robot is composed of a 4-DOF needle alignment module and a 2-DOF remotely actuated needle dri
This letter presents a novel robotic mechanism inspired by origami and its fabrication method using three-dimensional (3D) printing. The selected twisted tower design shows unique structural and geometrical properties that enable bending and linear motions, and therefore, can be suitable for various