Design of a user-friendly controller for the Sunram 7 with safety features to assist radiologists in MRI-guided breast biopsy
In breast cancer screening lesions may be found which need to be biopsied to check for malignancy. Some lesions are only visible on MRI, requiring the use of MRI-guided biopsy procedure. Current manual systems are inaccurate and there is demand for an MR safe surgical robot which could perform the task semi-automatically. At RaM the Sunram 7 biopsy robot has been developed which can do biopsies, but control is currently difficult and not intuitive.
In this thesis research will be done to find the optimal way to control the Sunram 7 robot to perform biopsies in a breast (phantom) in a way that it could potentially be used in hospitals. Example key aspects are accuracy, reaction speed (latency), user friendliness, versatility. The end result will be a working prototype of the chosen controller.
Some aspects to investigate:
- Controllers in literature: reading papers about similar robots and their controllers
- Requirements/wishes from potential users: interviews to learn their preferences
- Definition of surgical task: biopsy target location and approach angles
- Forward and inverse kinematics of Sunram 7: current and target joint vector
- Calibration of Sunram 7
- Control of pneumatic stepper motors
- Input method
- Method of visualization and/or feedback
- Implementing the chosen controller(s)
- Experiments
- Evaluation of controller performance: what are key evaluation parameters. E.g. speed, precision, qualitative user feedback.
- Etc.