Robotic real-time translational and rotational head motion correction during frameless stereotactic radiosurgery

To develop a control system to correct both translational and rotational head motion deviations in real-time during frameless stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS).

A novel feedback control with a feed-forward algorithm was utilized to correct for the coupling of translation and rotation present in serial kinematic robotic systems. Input parameters for the algorithm include the real-time 6DOF target position, the frame pitch pivot point to target distance constant, and the translational and angular Linac beam off (gating) tolerance constants for patient safety. Testing of the algorithm was done using a 4D (XY Z + pitch) robotic stage, an infrared head position sensing unit and a control computer. The measured head position signal was processed and a resulting command was sent to the interface of a four-axis motor controller, through which four stepper motors were driven to perform motion compensation.

The control of the translation of a brain target was decoupled with the control of the rotation. For a phantom study, the corrected position was within a translational displacement of 0.35 mm and a pitch displacement of 0.15° 100% of the time. For a volunteer study, the corrected position was within displacements of 0.4 mm and 0.2° over 98.5% of the time, while it was 10.7% without correction.

The authors report a control design approach for both translational and rotational head motion correction. The experiments demonstrated that control performance of the 4D robotic stage meets the submillimeter and subdegree accuracy required by SRS.