Eva Rothgang1, 2, Clifford R. Weiss3, Frank Wacker4, Joachim Hornegger1, Christine H. Lorenz2, 3, Wesley D. Gilson2, 3
1Pattern Recognition Lab, Department of Computer Science, Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen, Germany; 2Center for Applied Medical Imaging, Siemens Corporate Research, Baltimore, MD, United States; 3Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States; 4Department of Radiology, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany
An increasing number of minimally-invasive percutaneous needle interventions is performed under MR guidance including biopsies, targeted drug delivery and thermal ablations. However, these procedures are still mainly performed at tertiary care centers and the complexity of the current workflow is a primary barrier for more widespread adoption. This study presents software-based methods to improve time efficiency and targeting accuracy of freehand percutaneous MR-guided punctures by simplifying trajectory planning, entry point localization, and slice alignment without introducing additional equipment.
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