Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 23, 2026
Use of MRI-ultrasound Fusion to Achieve Targeted Prostate Biopsy
Published on: April 9, 2019
A workspace-orientated needle-guiding robot for 3T MRI-guided transperineal prostate intervention: evaluation of
Sang-Eun Song1, Nobuhiko Hata, Iulian Iordachita
1National Center for Image-Guided Therapy, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. sam0song@gmail.com
Background:
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided prostate interventions have been introduced to enhance the cancer detection. For accurate needle positioning, in-bore-operated robotic systems have been developed and optimal use of the confined in-bore space become a critical engineering challenge.
Methods:
As preliminary evaluation of our prostate intervention robot, we conducted a workspace design analysis, using a new evaluation method that we developed for in-bore-operated robots for transperineal prostate interventions, and an MRI compatibility study.
Results:
The workspace analysis resulted in the effective workspace (VW ) of 0.32, which is greater than that of our early prototype, despite the current robot being ca. 50% larger than the early prototype in sectional space. The MRI compatibility study resulted in < 15% signal:noise ratio (SNR) reduction.
Conclusions:
The new workspace evaluation method quantifies the workspace utilization of the in-bore-operated robots for MRI-guided transperineal prostate interventions, providing a useful tool for evaluation and new robot design. The robot creates insignificant electromagnetic noise during typical prostate imaging sequences.
