Angular needle tracker and stabilizer for image-guided interventions

Abstract

Introduction

Minimally invasive image-guided interventions have changed the face of procedural medicine. For these procedures, safety and efficacy depend on precise needle placement. Needle targeting devices help improve the accuracy of needle placement, but their use has not seen broad penetration. Some of these devices are costly and require major modifications to the clinical workflow. In this article, we developed a low-cost, disposable, and easy-to-use angulation tracking device, which was based on a redesigned commercial passive needle holder.

Material and methods

The new design provided real-time angulation information for needle tracking. In this design, two potentiometers were used as angulation sensors, and they were connected to two axes of the passive needle holder’s arch structure through a 3 D-printed bridge structure. A control unit included an Arduino Pro Mini, a Bluetooth module, and two rechargeable batteries. The angulation was calculated and communicated in real time to a novel developed smartphone app, where real-time angulation information was displayed for guiding the operator to position the needle to the planned angles.

Results

The open-air test results showed that the average errors are 1.03° and 1.08° for left–right angulation and head–foot angulation, respectively. The animal cadaver tests revealed that the novel system had an average angular error of 3.2° and a radial distance error of 3.1 mm.

Conclusions

The accuracy was comparable with some commercially available solutions. The novel and low-cost needle tracking device may find a role as part of a real-time precision approach to both planning and implementation of image-guided therapies.

Keywords:

• Angulation
• smartphone
• needle placement
• image-guided therapy
• medical device

Declaration of interest

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

Additional information

Funding

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