Robot-Assisted Intracerebral Hemorrhage Evacuation: An Experimental Evaluation

We present a novel robotic approach for the rapid, minimally invasive treatment of Intracerebral Hemorrhage (ICH), in which a hematoma or blood clot arises in the brain parenchyma. We present a custom image-guided robot system that delivers a steerable cannula into the lesion and aspirates it from the inside. The steerable cannula consists of an initial straight tube delivered in a manner similar to image-guided biopsy (and which uses a commercial image guidance system), followed by the sequential deployment of multiple individual precurved elastic tubes. Rather than deploying the tubes simultaneously, as has been done in nearly all prior studies, we deploy the tubes one at a time, using a compilation of their individual workspaces to reach desired points inside the lesion. This represents a new paradigm in active cannula research, defining a novel procedure-planning problem. A design that solves this problem can potentially save many lives by enabling brain decompression both more rapidly and less invasively than is possible through the traditional open surgery approach. Experimental results include a comparison of the simulated and actual workspaces of the prototype robot, and an accuracy evaluation of the system.