Resolution-Optimal Motion Planning for Steerable Needles

TL;DR

This paper presents the first resolution-optimal motion planner for steerable needles that balances fast computation with strong theoretical guarantees, improving accuracy and safety in minimally invasive procedures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel resolution-optimal motion planning algorithm for steerable needles with proven completeness and optimality, outperforming existing methods in simulation.

Findings

Faster plan generation compared to state-of-the-art methods

Higher-quality motion plans with clinically relevant cost functions

Theoretical guarantees improve practical plan quality

Abstract

Medical steerable needles can follow 3D curvilinear trajectories inside body tissue, enabling them to move around critical anatomical structures and precisely reach clinically significant targets in a minimally invasive way. Automating needle steering, with motion planning as a key component, has the potential to maximize the accuracy, precision, speed, and safety of steerable needle procedures. In this paper, we introduce the first resolution-optimal motion planner for steerable needles that offers excellent practical performance in terms of runtime while simultaneously providing strong theoretical guarantees on completeness and the global optimality of the motion plan in finite time. Compared to state-of-the-art steerable needle motion planners, simulation experiments on realistic scenarios of lung biopsy demonstrate that our proposed planner is faster in generating higher-quality plans while incorporating clinically relevant cost functions. This indicates that the theoretical guarantees of the proposed planner have a practical impact on the motion plan quality, which is valuable for computing motion plans that minimize patient trauma.