Improvement of robotic mechanism for automated biopsy

This paper presents improved robotic mechanism for automated biopsy procedure. Needle insertion type intervention has the advantages of minimal invasiveness and fast recovery of the patient, but radiation exposure of the clinician and patient and dependency of insertion accuracy on the clinician's skill are drawbacks. The robotic intervention system is a solution of the problems. As one component of the system, the robotic mechanism for biopsy has been developed. The previous robot mechanism sequentially performs all the processes of the biopsy except the anesthesia, but more practical problems such as robust operation, necessity of down-scaling, and safety issue should be considered. The biopsy robot model II-B is the revised version of the previous models. The modifications include adding a cartridge rotation checker and needle stoppers, renovating cartridge connection method, the spring loader, and spring block mover, and etc. Effectiveness of the improved functions is verified by experiment.