Biomedical Technology: MRI Guided Breast Biopsy
Motivation: Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) has in recent years become a popular treatment for primary tumors in the breast, kidney, liver, and etc. However, traditional approaches of guidance such as ultrasound and computed tomography (CT) fail to provide satisfactory placement precision. Although MRI guidance offers the ability to evaluate the completeness of the RFA, those procedures that are currently done using MRI are performed under “image guidance” rather than “continuous imaging”. The goal of this research is to build a multi-DOF device for breast biopsy/RFA that is MRI compatible and teleoperated with a haptic interface. We envision a “one-sitting procedure”, whereby identification of tumor boundaries, placement of the needle, assessment of placement accuracy, ablation, and assessment of ablation accuracy can be done in one sitting, without removing the patient from the scanner or disrupting tumor location, as shown in Fig. 1.