Motion Planning for a Three-Stage Multilumen Transoral Lung Access System

Area of Science:

• Medical Robotics
• Surgical Planning
• Oncology

Background:

• Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death globally.
• Early diagnosis is crucial for improving patient survival rates.
• Current minimally invasive lung biopsy methods have limitations in accessing all potential tumor sites.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a motion planner for a novel multilumen transoral lung access system.
• To enable safe and comprehensive biopsies throughout the lung for improved lung cancer diagnosis.
• To develop a system capable of accessing all biopsy sites, overcoming current clinical limitations.

Main Methods:

• Development of a three-stage transoral lung access system: bronchoscope deployment, concentric tube robot insertion, and steerable needle navigation.
• Implementation of a sampling-based motion planner to compute actions for each stage.
• Consideration of inter-stage coupling and avoidance of anatomical obstacles like blood vessels during planning.

Main Results:

• Demonstration of the motion planner's fast computation speeds.
• Successful computation of safe trajectories with high clearance from anatomical obstacles in simulated environments.
• Validation of the system's potential for precise navigation within the lung parenchyma.

Conclusions:

• The developed motion planner is effective for the multilumen transoral lung access system.
• This system has the potential to revolutionize early-stage lung cancer diagnosis by enabling biopsies at previously inaccessible sites.
• Further development could lead to improved patient outcomes through more effective cancer detection and treatment.