Design, development, and evaluation of a master–slave surgical system for breast biopsy under continuous MRI

Abstract

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) provides superior soft-tissue contrast in cancer diagnosis compared to other imaging modalities. However, the strong magnetic field inside the MRI bore along with limited scanner bore size poses significant challenges. Since current approaches in breast biopsy using MR images are primarily blind targeting approaches, it is necessary to develop an MRI-compatible robot that can avoid multiple needle insertions into the breast tissue. This MRI-compatible robotic system could potentially lead to improvement in the targeting accuracy and reduce sampling errors. A master–slave surgical system has been developed comprising a MRI-compatible slave robot which consists of one piezo motor and five pneumatic cylinders connected by long pneumatic transmission lines. The slave robot follows the configuration of the master robot, which provides an intuitive manipulation interface for the physician and operates inside the MRI bore to adjust the needle position and orientation and perform needle insertion tasks. Based on the MRI experiments using the slave robot, there was no significant distortion in the images, and hence the slave robot can be safely operated inside the MRI with minimal loss in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Ex vivo and in vivo experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the master–slave surgical system.