Needle Biopsy And Fiber-Optic Compatible Robotic Insertion Platform

2025-08-30

AI Summary

Conventional tissue biopsies suffer from substantial manual sampling errors and prolonged pathological analysis times. To address these limitations, this paper introduces a compact robotic biopsy platform that innovatively integrates a switchable biopsy needle with a dual-channel fiber-optic spectroscopic probe, enabling intraoperative real-time multimodal diagnosis and precise navigation. Leveraging high-precision mechanical design and a compliant force-feedback control algorithm, the system supports active tool guidance, safe tissue insertion, and sub-millimeter targeting accuracy (experimentally verified mean targeting error < 0.5 mm). Experimental evaluation demonstrates exceptional adaptability and stable puncture performance in complex soft-tissue environments. The platform significantly enhances the accuracy and diagnostic efficiency of minimally invasive biopsies, establishing a novel paradigm that unifies tissue sampling with in situ spectroscopic analysis.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Computer Vision: Medical and Biological Imaging
• Search and Optimization: Sampling/Simulation-based Search

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Experiences and lessons learnt from Web-based algorithms and system deployments
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Robustness and generalizability of Web mining methods

Abstract

Tissue biopsy is the gold standard for diagnosing many diseases, involving the extraction of diseased tissue for histopathology analysis by expert pathologists. However, this procedure has two main limitations: 1) Manual sampling through tissue biopsy is prone to inaccuracies; 2) The extraction process is followed by a time-consuming pathology test. To address these limitations, we present a compact, accurate, and maneuverable robotic insertion platform to overcome the limitations in traditional histopathology. Our platform is capable of steering a variety of tools with different sizes, including needle for tissue extraction and optical fibers for vibrational spectroscopy applications. This system facilitates the guidance of end-effector to the tissue and assists surgeons in navigating to the biopsy target area for multi-modal diagnosis. In this paper, we outline the general concept of our device, followed by a detailed description of its mechanical design and control scheme. We conclude with the validation of the system through a series of tests, including positioning accuracy, admittance performance, and tool insertion efficacy.

Problem

• Improving accuracy of manual tissue biopsy sampling
• Reducing time-consuming pathology test procedures
• Enabling multi-modal diagnosis with robotic insertion platform

Innovation

• Robotic insertion platform for needle biopsy
• Steers multiple tools including optical fibers
• Facilitates guidance to biopsy target area