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Abstract #1844

Development of a Pneumatic Robot for MRI-Guided Transperineal Prostate Intervention

Sang Eun Song1, Nathan Bongjoon Cho1, Iulian Iordachita2, Gregory Scott Fischer3, Junichi Tokuda4, Nobuhito Hata4, Gabor Fichtinger5, Clare Tempany4

1Engineering Research Center, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States; 2Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States; 3Mechanical Engineering Department, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worchester, MA, United States; 4Brigham and Womens Hospital, Boston, MA, United States; 5School of Computing,, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada


As accurate needle positioning helps the prostate cancer detection and treatment, a number of MRI-compatible robots have been introduced. However, problems exist due to the strong magnetic field and limited workspace. Pneumatic actuator has the minimum distraction in the environment. However, it has poor controllability. To overcome the controllability problem, a simple external damping mechanism that can enhance accuracy was developed. Based on the actuator mechanism and workflow optimized modular design approaches, a new pneumatically actuated 4-DOF parallel robot for MRI-guided prostate intervention was developed. A preliminary evaluation was conducted with satisfying actuator average position error of 0.2mm.