SmartTemplate Robot

The SmartTemplate robot is a 3 degrees-of-freedom (3-DOF) prismatic robot designed to align a needle guide in 3D space for MRI-guided interventions. It consists of three translational joints that move along orthogonal axes. The robot was designed based on the 2DoF Motorized Template [1,2] and extended to 3-DoF in a recent study [3].

Kinematic Chain

world
└── base_joint (fixed)
     └── base_link
          └── vertical_joint (Z-axis)
               └── vertical_link
                    └── horizontal_joint (X-axis)
                         └── horizontal_link
                              └── insertion_joint (Y-axis)
                                   └── needle_link (end-effector)

Joint Definitions

Joint Name Type Axis Parent Link Child Link Range (m)
vertical_joint prismatic Z (0,0,1) base_link vertical_link ±0.025
horizontal_joint prismatic X (1,0,0) vertical_link horizontal_link ±0.03
insertion_joint prismatic Y (0,1,0) horizontal_link needle_link 0.000 → 0.115
  • vertical_joint: Adjusts height of the needle guide above the perineum (Z-axis / P-A)
  • horizontal_joint: Aligns the guide laterally (X-axis / L-R)
  • insertion_joint: Controls needle insertion depth (Y-axis / I-S), i.e., into the patient

SmartTemplate Robot

References

  1. Song SE, Tokuda J, Tuncali K, Tempany CM, Zhang E, Hata N. Development and preliminary evaluation of a motorized needle guide template for MRI-guided targeted prostate biopsy. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2013 Nov;60(11):3019-27. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2013.2240301. Epub 2013 Jan 15. PMID: 23335658; PMCID: PMC3778164.
  2. Tilak G, Tuncali K, Song SE, Tokuda J, Olubiyi O, Fennessy F, Fedorov A, Penzkofer T, Tempany C, Hata N. 3T MR-guided in-bore transperineal prostate biopsy: A comparison of robotic and manual needle-guidance templates. J Magn Reson Imaging. 2015 Jul;42(1):63-71. doi: 10.1002/jmri.24770. Epub 2014 Sep 27. PMID: 25263213; PMCID: PMC4376663.
  3. Bernardes MC, Moreira P, Lezcano D, Foley L, Tuncali K, Tempany C, Kim JS, Hata N, Iordachita I, Tokuda J. In Vivo Feasibility Study: Evaluating Autonomous Data-Driven Robotic Needle Trajectory Correction in MRI-Guided Transperineal Procedures. IEEE Robot Autom Lett. 2024 Oct;9(10):8975-8982. doi: 10.1109/lra.2024.3455940. Epub 2024 Sep 6. PMID: 39371576; PMCID: PMC11448709.
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