Abstract
Steerable needles offer a minimally invasive method to deliver treatment to hard-to-reach tissue regions. We introduce a new class of tape-spring steerable needles capable of sharp turns ranging from 15 to 150 degrees with a turn radius as low as 3mm, which minimizes surrounding tissue damage. In this work, we derive and experimentally validate a geometric model for our steerable needle design. We evaluate both manual and robotic steering of the needle along a Dubins path in 7 kPa and 13 kPa tissue phantoms, simulating our target clinical application in healthy and unhealthy liver tissue. We conduct experiments to measure needle robustness to stiffness transitions between non-homogeneous tissues. We demonstrate progress towards clinical use with needle tip tracking via ultrasound imaging, navigation around anatomical obstacles, and integration with a robotic autonomous steering system.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
This work was in part supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. 2020295381. Omar Abdoun was supported by NIH Medical Scientist Training Program T32 GM07170.
