Irreversible Electroporation treatment (IRE) has been evolving as an alternative technique for thermal treatments such as radiofrequency ablation, microwave ablation, cryoablation etc.
This technique is used for ablating tumours in the liver, lungs, pancreas, and kidney in human beings. To achieve a successful ablation, the treatment is carried out by inserting needles in a perfect parallel arrangement, at a pre-defined distance that varies between 1 and 2.5 cm around the tumour mass. The needles will be inserted manually by surgeons with the help of Magnetic Resonance Imaging. As mentioned earlier, accurate needle placement around the tumour is essential to destroy it completely, which means that a manual placement operation can be problematic. When more than two needles are used, several attempts may be required for surgeons to properly place the needles around the tumour in a parallel position, at a pre-defined distance. This leads to a decrease in the success rate of the ablation, which ultimately results in an increase in the total treatment duration.
This thesis is focused on developing a needle holder model for the preliminary existing robot prototype This prototype is limited to a single needle insertion technique where it can accommodate only 19 gauge needles. The main objective of this project is to introduce a multiple needle holder for the existing robot prototype and to analyse its experimental characterizations.
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