Robotized Brachytherapy of Prostate

In this chapter, a robotic concept for the prostatic brachytherapy is described. Based on adaptive tracking of mobile targets under ultrasound control using an industrial robot manipulator, the concept integrates two main tasks: mobile target tracking and on-line supervision. The mobile target corresponds to the track at the millimeter scale to the cancerous tissues. This task is done after detection of the prostate contour applied on acquired ultrasound images. The targets are selected safety with manual or automatic approaches, through a virtual environment, where their coordinates are transferred to the robot. The latter is controlled adaptively according to the target position, thus realizing the both brachytherapy motions, related to the needle insertion and the seed injection. The on-line supervision of the robotic concept is performed, based on quantitative approach, it improves the safety during the brachytherapy motions. A fault diagnosis strategy is applied to detect a possible change of the operation modes of the joint actuator. Experimental results are applied on a prostate phantom using one access point, they show the advantage of the described concept in reducing trauma and recovery times for real patients

Keywords: Robot manipulator, Prostatic brachytherapy, Target tracking and On-line supervision