TY - JOUR
T1 - Intraoperative Needle Tip Tracking with an Integrated Fibre-Optic Ultrasound Sensor
AU - Baker, Christian
AU - Xochicale, Miguel
AU - Lin, Fang-Yu
AU - Mathews, Sunish
AU - Joubert, Francois
AU - Shakir, Dzhoshkun I.
AU - Miles, Richard
AU - Mosse, Charles A.
AU - Zhao, Tianrui
AU - Liang, Weidong
AU - Kunpalin, Yada
AU - Dromey, Brian
AU - Mistry, Talisa
AU - Sebire, Neil J.
AU - Zhang, Edward
AU - Ourselin, Sebastien
AU - Beard, Paul C.
AU - David, Anna L.
AU - Desjardins, Adrien E.
AU - Vercauteren, Tom
AU - Xia, Wenfeng
N1 - Copyright:
© 2022 by the authors.
PY - 2022/11/22
Y1 - 2022/11/22
N2 - Ultrasound is an essential tool for guidance of many minimally-invasive surgical and interventional procedures, where accurate placement of the interventional device is critical to avoid adverse events. Needle insertion procedures for anaesthesia, fetal medicine and tumour biopsy are commonly ultrasound-guided, and misplacement of the needle may lead to complications such as nerve damage, organ injury or pregnancy loss. Clear visibility of the needle tip is therefore critical, but visibility is often precluded by tissue heterogeneities or specular reflections from the needle shaft. This paper presents the in vitro and ex vivo accuracy of a new, real-time, ultrasound needle tip tracking system for guidance of fetal interventions. A fibre-optic, Fabry-Pérot interferometer hydrophone is integrated into an intraoperative needle and used to localise the needle tip within a handheld ultrasound field. While previous, related work has been based on research ultrasound systems with bespoke transmission sequences, the new system—developed under the ISO 13485 Medical Devices quality standard—operates as an adjunct to a commercial ultrasound imaging system and therefore provides the image quality expected in the clinic, superimposing a cross-hair onto the ultrasound image at the needle tip position. Tracking accuracy was determined by translating the needle tip to 356 known positions in the ultrasound field of view in a tank of water, and by comparison to manual labelling of the the position of the needle in B-mode US images during an insertion into an ex vivo phantom. In water, the mean distance between tracked and true positions was 0.7 ± 0.4 mm with a mean repeatability of 0.3 ± 0.2 mm. In the tissue phantom, the mean distance between tracked and labelled positions was 1.1 ± 0.7 mm. Tracking performance was found to be independent of needle angle. The study demonstrates the performance and clinical compatibility of ultrasound needle tracking, an essential step towards a first-in-human study.
AB - Ultrasound is an essential tool for guidance of many minimally-invasive surgical and interventional procedures, where accurate placement of the interventional device is critical to avoid adverse events. Needle insertion procedures for anaesthesia, fetal medicine and tumour biopsy are commonly ultrasound-guided, and misplacement of the needle may lead to complications such as nerve damage, organ injury or pregnancy loss. Clear visibility of the needle tip is therefore critical, but visibility is often precluded by tissue heterogeneities or specular reflections from the needle shaft. This paper presents the in vitro and ex vivo accuracy of a new, real-time, ultrasound needle tip tracking system for guidance of fetal interventions. A fibre-optic, Fabry-Pérot interferometer hydrophone is integrated into an intraoperative needle and used to localise the needle tip within a handheld ultrasound field. While previous, related work has been based on research ultrasound systems with bespoke transmission sequences, the new system—developed under the ISO 13485 Medical Devices quality standard—operates as an adjunct to a commercial ultrasound imaging system and therefore provides the image quality expected in the clinic, superimposing a cross-hair onto the ultrasound image at the needle tip position. Tracking accuracy was determined by translating the needle tip to 356 known positions in the ultrasound field of view in a tank of water, and by comparison to manual labelling of the the position of the needle in B-mode US images during an insertion into an ex vivo phantom. In water, the mean distance between tracked and true positions was 0.7 ± 0.4 mm with a mean repeatability of 0.3 ± 0.2 mm. In the tissue phantom, the mean distance between tracked and labelled positions was 1.1 ± 0.7 mm. Tracking performance was found to be independent of needle angle. The study demonstrates the performance and clinical compatibility of ultrasound needle tracking, an essential step towards a first-in-human study.
KW - ultrasound-guided interventions
KW - ultrasound needle tracking
KW - fibre-optic hydrophone
U2 - 10.3390/s22239035
DO - 10.3390/s22239035
M3 - Article
SN - 1424-8220
VL - 22
JO - Sensors
JF - Sensors
IS - 23
M1 - 9035
ER -
