Mechanics of Needle Insertion in Soft Tissues

Abstract

Percutaneous needle insertion has become a standard procedure in open surgery, notably for biopsies of abdominal tumors, breast cancer, and prostate cancer. However, the needle insertion into a target is difficult because it can be deflected easily due to the design of the needle tip. This deflection can cause the needle to miss its target, and the insertion procedure might need to be repeated, leading to adverse damage to the tissue. Therefore, it is crucial to predict the needle steering behavior during the insertion into soft tissues. This work proposes an analytical approach for computing the needle-tissue interaction forces and modeling the needle deflection to estimate needle steering behavior inside the soft tissues. This model in predicting the needle deflection is based on preoperatively obtained data, and does not require real-time feedback of measured system states for updating the model parameters. The analytical model uses computing software, e.g., MATLAB, to estimate the needle deflection, which requires less computational time than the Finite Element methods.