Design, analysis and control of a novel tendon-driven magnetic resonance-guided robotic system for minimally invasive breast surgery

Biopsy and brachytherapy for small core breast cancer are always difficult medical problems in the field of cancer treatment. This research mainly develops a magnetic resonance imaging-guided high-precision robotic system for breast puncture treatment. First, a 5-degree-of-freedom tendon-based surgical robotic system is introduced in detail. What follows are the kinematic analysis and dynamical modeling of the robotic system, where a mathematic dynamic model is established using the Lagrange method and a lumped parameter tendon model is used to identify the nonlinear gain of the tendon-sheath transmission system. Based on the dynamical models, an adaptive proportional-integral-derivative controller with friction compensation is proposed for accurate position control. Through simulations using different sinusoidal input signals, we observe that the sinusoidal tracking error at 1/2 Hz is 0.41mm. Finally, the experiments on tendon-sheath transmission and needle insertion performance are conducted, which show that the insertion precision is 0.68mm in laboratory environment.