Trajectory Planning for Patch Clamp in a Highly Constrained Cerebrovascular Environment

The patch-clamp technique is the gold standard for electrophysiologists' research into the cellular and molecular biological mechanisms underlying mental activities at the animal level. During the procedure, micropipette trajectory planning plays a significant role in the in vivo patch clamp. However, the high constraint between the cerebral environment and the micropipette's movement, as well as the absence of comprehensive 3D spatial information, make planning its trajectory incredibly challenging. To efficiently avoid blood vessel obstacles and insert into a target destination, this paper proposes an active avoidance micropipette trajectory planning method to improve the efficiency of the micropipette insertion process for in vivo patch clamp. More precisely, a feasible navigable space based on the available spatial information for the micropipette is first developed. The available spatial information is obtained by constructing the three-dimensional vessel distribution within the two-photon microscope imaging field of view. Based on the micropipette's navigable space, a trajectory potential field is then introduced to navigate the micropipette to the destination along the optimized trajectory. Finally, experimental validations and applications demonstrate that our proposed approach increases the success rate and reduces the execution time for the micropipette insertion, as well as minimizes damage to the brain tissue.