Using mixed-reality in biopsy of lesions inside deformable organs

Finished: 2021-07-21

MSc assignment

Breast screening is done to determine whether lesions are present in the breast. The biopsy of found lesions is usually done under the guidance of Ultrasound (US) to track the location of the needle in the breast. Some cancer types cannot be detected using US; thus, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) will instead be used for these types of cancer. An MR image gives a highly detailed image of the breast which visualizes most cancer types. 

A downside of using MR images is that the patient must leave the MRI-scanner before biopsy can be performed due to size constraints resulting in a surgical intervention without visual feedback. The patient must be repositioned in the MRI to confirm that the lesion has been hit when the biopsy was performed which is both timeconsuming and can result in multiple biopsies before the lesion has been hit successfully. Deformation of the breast might occur during the biopsy and when repositioning the patient which might change the position of the lesion.

This assignment will research whether the implementation of a Mixed Reality system using the Microsoft HoloLens will improve the surgeon's ability to perform a biopsy of MRI-only visible lesions. A 3D hologram will be created from MRI data which shows the position of the lesion of interest. This hologram will be projected over the actual breast using retro-reflective markers to give the surgeon visual information on the position of the lesion while doing the biopsy. Deformations of the breast that will occur during the intervention will be tracked and the hologram will be updated accordingly to ensure correct placement of the lesion.

Performance of various aspects of the solution will be evaluated using a second measurement system.