Sunram 7 is the latest prototype of robotic systems for breast biopsy. It has five degrees of freedom which are powered by 3D printed pneumatic stepper motors, making it safe for use within the MRI scanner. The envisaged workflow is that it inserts a biopsy needle and collect sample tissue from the suspicious lesion which can be examined later for malignancy.
The base and end-effector of Sunram 7 are (or can be) equipped with MRI-visible markers, retroreflective markers (for IR-based stereo vision), printed QR (or AR) codes for single-lens tracking, divots for probing needles, custom mounts for other trackers (e.g. NDI Aurora electromagnetic tracking system), dummy targets and so on. It is up to you to choose a suitable set of markers/trackers for your research.
Several challenges are associated with this system:
- Where is the lesion?
- What is the current robot configuration, and the required trajectory to reach the target?
- How accurately can we position the needle, what are the error sources?
- How does the new workflow compare to the gold standard, i.e. manual MRI-guided biopsy?
- What do the doctors actually want?
- Etcetera
Video of previous prototype: Sunram 5 video