Review of research on path planning and control methods of flexible steerable needle puncture robot

Abstract

In the field of minimally invasive interventional therapy, the related research on the soft tissue puncture robot and its technology based on the flexible steerable needle as a research hot topic at present, and it has been developed rapidly in the past ten years. In order to better understand the development status of the flexible steerable needle puncture (FSNP) robot and provide reference for its design and improvement in subsequent research, it is necessary to introduce in two aspects of FSNP robot: the puncture path planning and the control methods. First, this article introduced the concept of the FSNP technology, and the necessity of the application of FSNP soft tissue robot in minimally invasive interventional surgery. Second, this article mainly introduced the principle of FSNP, the path planning of FSNP, the navigation and positioning control of the needle tip of the flexible steerable needle, the control method of FSNP system, and the controllable flexible needle. Finally, combined with the above analysis and introduction, it was pointed out that FSNP soft tissue robot and its related technology would be an important development direction in the field of minimally invasive interventional therapy in the future, and the current existing problems were pointed out. Meanwhile, the development trend of FSNP robot control technology was summarized and prospected.

Keywords:

• Flexible steerable needle
• path planning
• algorithm
• needle tip navigation control
• needle tip positioning control
• controllable flexible needle

Author contributions

Investigation, Bing Li; resources, Yongde Zhang; data curation, Bing Li and Xuesong Dai; supervision, Yongde Zhang; writing—original draft preparation, Bing Li; writing—review and editing, Bing Li.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research is partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), project no. 51675142. Part of the fund was allocated by the key project ZD2018013 at the Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province, China.