Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 8, 2026

Remote Magnetic Navigation for Accurate, Real-time Catheter Positioning and Ablation in Cardiac Electrophysiology Procedures
Published on: April 21, 2013
Design and Evaluation of a Needle Manipulation System with EM Tracking for CT-Guided Spinal Injections
Chang Chang1, Junling Mei2, Yanzhou Wang1
1Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Laboratory of Computational Sensing and Robotics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Abstract:
This paper presents a flexible needle guidance system and its workflow that enables registration of computed tomography (CT) and electromagnetic (EM) tracking systems with a finite element (FE) simulator for needle-based percutaneous spinal injections. CT is used only pre- and postoperatively for surgical planning and confirmation, while EM tracking is combined intraoperatively with an FE-based needle controller to track the planned needle trajectory and avoid obstacles. Evaluation of the proposed system using a multi-layer soft tissue phantom shows an average targeting accuracy of 0.4mm.

