Applications of Inertial Navigation Systems in Medical Engineering

Inertial navigation systems are of the most important and practical systems in determining the velocity, position and attitude of the vehicles and different equipment. In these systems, three accelerometers and three gyroscopes are used to measure linear accelerations and angular velocities of vehicles, respectively. By using the output of these sensors and special inertial algorithms in different frames, parameters of vehicle such as position, velocity and attitude can be calculated. These systems are used in medical equipment including, but not limited to MRI devices, intelligent patient beds, surgical robots and angiography equipment. In this paper, inertial navigation systems, inertial sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes and inertial navigation algorithm are introduced. Afterwards, different applicable samples of inertial navigation system in medical equipment are described. According to the study carried out in this paper, it is presented and proved that applying inertial navigation in medical equipment is granted with precise and fast positioning as well as attitude determination. Moreover, as this technique of utilizing inertial navigation is applied to medical devices, a high efficiency system in terms of specifying the position and attitude will be achieved.