Motion Planning for Curvature-Constrained Mobile Robots with Applications to Needle Steering

Advances in medical imaging modalities such as MRI, ultrasound, and x-ray fluoroscopy are now providing physicians with real-time, patient-specific information as they perform medical procedures such as extracting tissue samples for biopsies, injecting drugs for anesthesia, or implanting radioactive seeds for brachytherapy cancer treatment. These diagnostic and therapeutic medical procedures require insertion of a needle to a specific location in soft tissue. We are developing motion planning algorithms for medical needle insertion procedures that can utilize the information obtained by real-time imaging to accurately reach desired locations.