Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Development of a compact continuum tubular robotic system for nasopharyngeal biopsy

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Traditional posterior nasopharyngeal biopsy using a flexible nasal endoscope has the risks of abrasion and injury to the nasal mucosa and thus causing trauma to the patient. Recently, a new class of robots known as continuum tubular robots (CTRs) provide a novel solution to the challenge with miniaturized size, curvilinear maneuverability, and capability of avoiding collision within the nasal environment. This paper presents a compact CTR which is 35 cm in total length, 10 cm in diameter, 2.15 kg in weight, and easy to be integrated with a robotic arm to perform more complicated operations. Structural design, end-effector design, and workspace analysis are described in detail. In addition, teleoperation of the CTR using a haptic input device is developed for position control in 3D space. Moreover, by integrating the robot with three electromagnetic tracking sensors, a navigation system together with a shape reconstruction algorithm is developed. Comprehensive experiments are conducted to test the functionality of the proposed prototype; experiment results show that under teleoperation, the system has an accuracy of 2.20 mm in following a linear path, an accuracy of 2.01 mm in following a circular path, and a latency time of 0.1 s. It is also found that the proposed shape reconstruction algorithm has a mean error of around 1 mm along the length of the tubes. Besides, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed robotic system being applied to posterior nasopharyngeal biopsy are demonstrated by a cadaver experiment. The proposed robotic system holds promise to enhance clinical operation in transnasal procedures.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15
Fig. 16
Fig. 17
Fig. 18

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Burgner J, Swaney PJ, Lathrop RA, Weaver KD, Webster RJ (2013) Debulking from within: a robotic steerable cannula for intracerebral hemorrhage evacuation. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng 60(9):2567–2575

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Burgner J, Rucker DC, Gilbert HB, Swaney PJ, Russell PT, Weaver KD, Webster RJ (2014) A telerobotic system for transnasal surgery. IEEE/ASME Trans Mechatron 19(3):996–1006

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Butler EJ, Hammond-Oakley R, Chawarski S, Gosline AH, Codd P, Anor T, Madsen JR, Dupont PE, Lock J (2012) Robotic neuro-emdoscope with concentric tube augmentation. In: IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS), pp 2941–2946

  4. Dupont PE, Lock J, Itkowitz B, Butler E (2010) Design and control of concentric-tube robots. IEEE Trans Robot 26(2):209–225

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  5. Ebert LC, Ptacek W, Naether S, Fürst M, Ross S, Buck U, Weber S, Thali M (2010) Virtobot a multi-functional robotic system for 3d surface scanning and automatic post mortem biopsy. Int J Med Robot Comput Assist Surg 6(1):18–27

    Google Scholar 

  6. Gosline AH, Vasilyev NV, Butler EJ, Folk C, Cohen A, Chen R, Lang N, Del Nido PJ, Dupont PE (2012) Percutaneous intracardiac beating-heart surgery using metal MEMS tissue approximation tools. Int J Robot Res 31(9):1081–1093

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Guler O, Yaniv Z (2012) Image-guided navigation: a cost effective practical introduction using the image-guided surgery toolkit (IGSTK). In: International conference of the IEEE engineering in medicine and biology society (EMBC), pp 6056–6059

  8. Hendrick RJ, Mitchell CR, Herrell SD, Webster RJ (2015) Hand-held transendoscopic robotic manipulators: a transurethral laser prostate surgery case study. Int J Robot Res 34(13):1559–1572

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Horn BK (1987) Closed-form solution of absolute orientation using unit quaternions. J Opt Soc Am A 4(4):629–642

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Kim B, Ha J, Park F, Dupont PE (2014) Optimizing curvature sensor placement for fast, accurate shape sensing of continuum robots. In: 2014 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (ICRA), pp 5374–5379

  11. King AD, Vlantis AC, Bhatia KS, Zee BC, Woo JK, Tse GM, Chan AT, Ahuja AT (2011) Primary nasopharyngeal carcinoma: diagnostic accuracy of MR imaging versus that of endoscopy and endoscopic biopsy. Radiology 258(2):531–537

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. Lee H, Kim J (2014) Estimation of flexible needle deflection in layered soft tissues with different elastic moduli. Med Biol Eng Comput 52(9):729–740

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  13. Lozano R, Naghavi M, Foreman K, Lim S, Shibuya K, Aboyans V, Abraham J, Adair T, Aggarwal R, Ahn SY et al (2013) Global and regional mortality from 235 causes of death for 20 age groups in 1990 and 2010: a systematic analysis for the global burden of disease study 2010. The Lancet 380(9859):2095–2128

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Midwinter K, Ahmed A, Willatt D (2001) A randomised trial of flexible versus rigid nasendoscopy in outpatient sinonasal examination. Clin Otolaryngol Allied Sci 26(4):281–283

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  15. National Cancer Centre Singapore: Nasopharyngeal cancer (2014) http://www.nccs.com.sg/Publications/CancerInformationBooklets/CancerType/Documents/NCCS_Naso_E.pdf

  16. Park YL, Elayaperumal S, Daniel B, Ryu SC, Shin M, Savall J, Black RJ, Moslehi B, Cutkosky MR (2010) Real-time estimation of 3-D needle shape and deflection for MRI-guided interventions. IEEE/ASME Trans Mechatron 15(6):906–915

    Google Scholar 

  17. Phadke R, Saha M, Prasad K, Goyal D (2001) Transnasal access for sampling a skull base lesion. Am J Neuroradiol 22(4):745–747

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  18. Ren H, Dupont PE (2011) Tubular structure enhancement for surgical instrument detection in 3D ultrasound. In: 2011 annual international conference of the IEEE in engineering in medicine and biology society, EMBC, pp 7203–7206. IEEE

  19. Ren H, Dupont PE (2012) Tubular enhanced geodesic active contours for continuum robot detection using 3D ultrasound. In: IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (ICRA), pp 2907–2912. IEEE

  20. Rucker DC, Webster RJ, Chirikjian GS, Cowan NJ (2010) Equilibrium conformations of concentric-tube continuum robots. Int J Robot Res 29(10):1263–1280

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Sears P, Dupont P (2006) A steerable needle technology using curved concentric tubes. In: IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS), pp 2850–2856

  22. Sears P, Dupont PE (2007) Inverse kinematics of concentric tube steerable needles. In: IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (ICRA), pp 1887–1892

  23. Selig J (2005) Geometric fundamentals of robotics (monographs in computer science series). Springer, New York

    Google Scholar 

  24. Song S, Li Z, Yu H, Ren H (2015) Electromagnetic positioning for tip tracking and shape sensing of flexible robots. IEEE Sens J 15(8):4565–4575

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Song S, Li Z, Yu H, Ren H (2015) Shape reconstruction for wire-driven flexible robots based on Bézier curve and electromagnetic positioning. Mechatronics 29:28–35

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Su H, Cardona DC, Shang W, Camilo A, Cole GA, Rucker DC, Webster RJ, Fischer GS (2012) A MRI-guided concentric tube continuum robot with piezoelectric actuation: a feasibility study. In: IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (ICRA), pp 1939–1945

  27. Subramaniam RP, Richardson RB, Morgan KT, Kimbell JS, Guilmette RA (1998) Computational fluid dynamics simulations of inspiratory airflow in the human nose and nasopharynx. Inhal Toxicol 10(2):91–120

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  28. Torabi M, Gupta R, Walsh CJ (2014) Compact robotically steerable image-guided instrument for multi-adjacent-point (MAP) targeting. IEEE Trans Robot 30(4):802–815

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Wampler CW (1986) Manipulator inverse kinematic solutions based on vector formulations and damped least-squares methods. IEEE Trans Syst Man Cybern 16(1):93–101

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Webster R, Okamura AM, Cowan NJ (2006) Toward active cannulas: miniature snake-like surgical robots. In: IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS), pp 2857–2863

  31. Wei WI, Sham JS (2005) Nasopharyngeal carcinoma. The Lancet 365(9476):2041–2054

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Wirz R, Torres LG, Swaney PJ, Gilbert H, Alterovitz R, Webster RJ III, Weaver KD, Russell PT III (2015) An experimental feasibility study on robotic endonasal telesurgery. Neurosurgery 76(4):479–484

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  33. Wu K, Wu L, Lim CM, Ren H (2014) An image based targeting method to guide a curvilinear concentric tube robot. In: IEEE international conference on robotics and biomimetics (ROBIO), pp 386–391

  34. Wu L, Yang X, Chen K, Ren H (2014) A minimal POE-based model for robotic kinematic calibration with only position measurements. IEEE Trans Autom Sci Eng 12(2):758–763

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Wu K, Wu L, Lim CM, Ren H (2015) Model-free image guidance for intelligent tubular robots with pre-clinical feasibility study: towards minimally invasive trans-orifice surgery. In: IEEE international conference on information and automation (ICIA), pp 749–754

  36. Wu K, Wu L, Ren H (2015) Motion planning of continuum tubular robots based on features extracted from statistical atlas. In: IEEE international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS), pp 5512–5517

  37. Wu L, Tan BLW, Ren H (2015) Prototype development of a hand-held robotic light pipe for intraocular procedures. In: 2015 IEEE international conference on robotics and biomimetics (ROBIO), pp 368–373

  38. Yang X, Wu L, Li J, Chen K (2014) A minimal kinematic model for serial robot calibration using POE formula. Robot Comput Integr Manuf 30(3):326–334

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Yoon HS, Oh SM, Jeong JH, Lee SH, Tae K, Koh KC, Yi BJ (2011) Active bending endoscope robot system for navigation through sinus area. In: 2011 IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS), pp 967–972

  40. Yu H, Wu L, Wu K, Ren H (2016) Development of a multi-channel concentric tube robotic system with active vision for transnasal nasopharyngeal carcinoma procedures. IEEE Robot Autom Lett 1(2):1172–1178

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Li Ting Lynette Teo, Jan Feiling, and Xin Liu for their contributions during their projects conducted in the Laboratory of Medical Mechatronics, National University of Singapore. This work was supported in part by the Singapore Academic Research Fund under Grant R-397-000-166-112 and Grant R-397-000-227-112, NMRC Bedside & Bench under grant R-397-000-245-511 and Singapore Millennium Foundation under Grant R-397-000-201-592 awarded to Dr. Hongliang Ren, and in part by an internal grant (VC Research Fellowship 322450-0096/08) of Queensland University of Technology awarded to Dr. Liao Wu.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

    Liao Wu

  2. School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Harbin Institute of Technology Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen, China

    Shuang Song

  3. Department of Biomedical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Keyu Wu & Hongliang Ren

  4. Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, National University Hospital, Singapore, Singapore

    Chwee Ming Lim

Authors
  1. Liao Wu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Shuang Song
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Keyu Wu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Chwee Ming Lim
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Hongliang Ren
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hongliang Ren.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (MP4 29717 KB)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Wu, L., Song, S., Wu, K. et al. Development of a compact continuum tubular robotic system for nasopharyngeal biopsy. Med Biol Eng Comput 55, 403–417 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-016-1514-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-016-1514-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation