An electromagnetic tracking needle clip: an enabling design for low-cost image-guided therapy

Abstract

Introduction: In this study, we hypothesized a disposable low-cost needle clip with a specially designed electromagnetic (EM) tracking sensor. It could be mounted onto 16- to 22-gauge needles, allowing the tip of the needle to be tracked in CT or US image-guided procedures using the Aurora EM tracking system.

Material and methods: A 3 D printed EM needle clip case contains a pair of specially designed electromagnetic solenoids, positioned perpendicularly to each other in order to achieve six degrees of freedom for tracking the tip of the needle. The performance of the EM tracking needle clip was evaluated.

Results: A low-cost 3D-printed disposable needle clip with specially designed EM tracking sensors that can be mounted on 16- to 22-gauge needles was designed. This needle clip has a 570 mm ×600 mm ×600 mm (L × W × H) working volume, an error <0.7 mm in the axial direction and 0.8 mm in the radial direction. The targeting accuracy results are on par with the commercially available EM tracking needles.

Conclusion: The designed EM needle clip provided successful needle tracking, with acceptable accuracy, and competitive performance compared to existing products. This proposed design may increase the clinical adoption of EM tracking needles because of its user-friendly design and low cost.

Keywords:

• Electromagnetic tracking
• image-guided system
• navigation
• computer aided surgery

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported in part by the: National Institutes of Health (NIH) Bench-to-Bedside Award (2015), the NIH Center for Interventional Oncology Grant (2015), the National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps Team Grant (2016) [grant number 1617340], NSF REU site program (2016) [grant number 1359095], the UGA-AU Inter-Institutional Seed Funding (2016), the American Society for Quality Dr. Richard J. Schlesinger Grant (2016), the PHS Grant from the Clinical and Translational Science Award Program (2016) [grant number UL1TR000454], and the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, NIH Center for Interventional Oncology and the NIH Intramural Research Program Z01 [grant number 1ZID BC011242] (2016) and [grant number CL040015] (2017).