Medical Needles Deformation Tracking
Résumé
Precise needle placement is important for a number of percutaneous interventions in different medical field, as, for instance, in the interventional radiological field. To improve needle placement, navigation systems are now more and more used in these clinical applications [1,2]. Nevertheless, they are still limited due to the inaccuracy coming from the needle deformation during the medical procedure [3]. In this abstract, we present our first results related to the feasibility of medical needles deformation tracking. Our talk is focused on the evaluation of a new home-made mechanical system enabling needle deformation tracking. This system is composed of two strain gauges and an electronic device. As the needle is deformed, the metallic foil pattern of each gauge is deformed, causing electrical resistance to change, and then the voltage at the electronic device output. Our hypothesis is that this voltage is a reproducible one-to-one function of the needle deformation. To demonstrate our hypothesis, we made a needle prototype, which was evaluated in an accurate benchmark. Following one strain gauge, we evaluate the voltage reproducibility by repeating 10 times, from an initial position, a same displacement of the needle tip. We then evaluate the voltage variation of the two strain gauges during the displacement of the needle tip in a plane. The first obtained results appear to be probative enough in order to investigate more precisely the real feasibility of using strain gauges for steerable medical needles deformation tracking. Taking into account this a priori information in real time will be very useful for improving the percutaneous intervention accuracy.