Development and Evaluation of an Actuated MRI-Compatible Robotic System for MRI-Guided Prostate Intervention

This paper reports the design, development, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) compatibility evaluation of an actuated transrectal prostate robot for MRI-guided needle intervention in the prostate. The robot performs actuated needle MRI-guidance with the goals of providing (i) MRI compatibility, (ii) MRI-guided needle placement with accuracy sufficient for targeting clinically significant prostate cancer foci, (iii) reducing interventional procedure times (thus increasing patient comfort and reducing opportunity for needle targeting error due to patient motion), (iv) enabling real-time MRI monitoring of interventional procedures, and (v) reducing the opportunities for error that arise in manually actuated needle placement. The design of the robot, employing piezo-ceramic-motor actuated needle guide positioning and manual needle insertion, is reported. Results of a MRI compatibility study show no reduction of MRI signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) with the motors disabled. Enabling the motors reduces the SNR by 80% without RF shielding, but SNR is only reduced by 40% to 60% with RF shielding. The addition of radio-frequency shielding is shown to significantly reduce image SNR degradation caused by the presence of the robotic device. An accuracy study of MRI-guided biopsy needle placements in a prostate phantom is reported. The study shows an average in-plane targeting error of 2.4 mm with a maximum error of 3.7 mm. These data indicate the system's needle targeting accuracy is similar to that obtained with a previously reported manually actuated system, and is sufficient to reliably sample clinically significant prostate cancer foci under MRI-guidance.