Development of a robotic FD‐CT‐guided navigation system for needle placement—preliminary accuracy tests

BACKGROUND: A needle placement system using a serial robot arm for manipulation of biopsy and/or treatment needles is introduced. A method for fast calibration of the robot and the preliminary accuracy tests of the robotic system are presented. METHODS: The setup consists of a DLR/KUKA Light Weight Robot III especially designed for safe human/robot interaction mounted on a mobile platform, a robot-driven angiographic C-arm system and a navigation system. RESULTS: Calibration of the robot with the navigation system has a residual error of 0.23 mm (rms) with a standard deviation of ± 0.1 mm. Needle targeting accuracy with different trajectories was 1.2 mm (rms) with a standard deviation of ± 0.4 mm. CONCLUSIONS: Robot absolute positioning accuracy was reduced to the navigation camera accuracy. The approach includes control strategies that may be very useful for interventional applications.