Design of an Instrument Guide for MRI-Guided Percutaneous Interventions

This paper describes the design of an instrument guidance device for percutaneous interventions in closed bore magnetic resonance (MR) imaging systems. The device consists of a curved arm piece that travels around a circular base and an additional needle holder that travels along the curved arm, thus providing two angular degrees of freedom that enable an ablation probe to pivot about a remote center of motion located at the skin entry point. The device is intended to be mounted onto a custom built MR coil that rests on the patient while they are imaged. Exact constraint design principles were used to incorporate translational bearings into the plastic parts. Thumbscrews were used for preload and locking so that the probe guide could be fixed along a specific trajectory. The device was prototyped via stereolithography as a proof of concept and demonstrated that a probe could be angled about a remote pivot point.