A concept for fail safe robotic needle insertion in soft tissue

This paper presents a concept of automatic needle placement for brachytherapy. For the success of this minimally invasive treatment, a precise and safe placement of needles inside soft tissue is fundamental. The presented concept incorporates information about the needle as well as the tissue to find a suitable needle trajectory. A patient-specific tissue model is derived from different imaging modalities and updated during the insertion. Essential for this concept is that during the robotic placement of the needle, it is continuously verified if proceeding is safe.