Optical Fiber-Based Needle Shape Sensing in Real Tissue: Single Core vs. Multicore Approaches

• Published in: arXiv.org 2023-09
• Main Authors: Lezcano, Dimitri A, Zhetpissov, Yernar, Cheng, Alexandra, Kim, Jin Seob, Iordachita, Iulian I
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bevels; Bragg gratings; Feedback; Fiber optics; Optical fibers; Physicians; Real time; Sensors
• ISSN: 2331-8422

Flexible needle insertion procedures are common for minimally-invasive surgeries for diagnosing and treating prostate cancer. Bevel-tip needles provide physicians the capability to steer the needle during long insertions to avoid vital anatomical structures in the patient and reduce post-operative patient discomfort. To provide needle placement feedback to the physician, sensors are embedded into needles for determining the real-time 3D shape of the needle during operation without needing to visualize the needle intra-operatively. Through expansive research in fiber optics, a plethora of bio-compatible, MRI-compatible, optical shape-sensors have been developed to provide real-time shape feedback, such as single-core and multicore fiber Bragg gratings. In this paper, we directly compare single-core fiber-based and multicore fiber-based needle shape-sensing through identically constructed, four-active area sensorized bevel-tip needles inserted into phantom and \exvivo tissue on the same experimental platform. In this work, we found that for shape-sensing in phantom tissue, the two needles performed identically with a \(p\)-value of \(0.164 > 0.05\), but in \exvivo real tissue, the single-core fiber sensorized needle significantly outperformed the multicore fiber configuration with a \(p\)-value of \(0.0005 < 0.05\). This paper also presents the experimental platform and method for directly comparing these optical shape sensors for the needle shape-sensing task, as well as provides direction, insight and required considerations for future work in constructively optimizing sensorized needles.