Incremental Needle Insertion System for Force and Position Sensing

An Incremental Needle Insertion System (INIS) which simultaneously measures the force and position of a needle during insertion was designed and fabricated for use in a tissue deformation study to improve realism in medical simulation. The INIS was tested in a fresh frozen cadaver experiment and the position of the needle was plotted and compared to the expected needle path. It was found that the INIS is sufficiently accurate with an average path deviation of 1.55 mm. In addition, INIS was shown to successfully measure the maximum Central Venous Catheterization needle insertion force which ranged from 3.02 N to 3.73 N.