Integrated Respiratory Sensing and Gated Control for Autonomous Needle Insertion Via CT Bore Robotic Arm

Overview & Synopsis

Currently, CT-guided lung biopsy is a highly manual procedure requiring patient breath-holding, iterative manual needle insertions, and repeated CT confirmation scans to accurately target a tumor. Automating this process within the CT bore--without relying on manual needle placement or patient breath-holding--has the potential to reduce procedure time, patient discomfort, and radiation exposure. In this work, we present an integrated sensing and control system capable of performing a gated needle insertion within the CT bore. The experiments demonstrate the system's ability to track and predict patient breath cycles, perform autonomous respiratory-gated needle insertion, and detect breath cycle anomalies.