A Low-Cost, Portable Guidance System for Needle Biopsy

描述（由申请人提供）：通过经皮穿刺活检进行早期疾病检测被认为是癌症诊断的金标准，从而获得良好的健康结果。该项目旨在通过使全科医生和其他保健专业人员能够在自己的办公室或诊所进行图像引导的针活检，而不是将可疑病变的患者送到遥远的中心，从而改善健康差距。关键的使能技术是一种基于超声波的引导系统，旨在提供直观和可靠的原位引导，可由仅需最少培训的介入医师使用，使医生能够在自己的诊所或办公室对患者进行针活检。该项目包括三个目标。第一个目标是开发和评估一种易于使用的靶向穿刺活检制导系统，重点是制导平台本身的开发，包括设备结构、内部校准、超声系统接口以及几种制导模式的开发。第二个目标是通过提供超声和表面到CT配准的新算法，将术前CT和超声之间的配准扩展到图像引导干预的引导系统，使关键结构的专家注释直接转移到引导系统成为可能。第三个目标是通过不同技能和训练水平的从业者在幻影模型和试点动物研究中评估该系统，并将其与最先进的制导系统进行比较。第三个目标包括建立一个保健差距咨询委员会，以指导进一步开发用于减少农村和服务不足人口的保健差距的设备。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Early disease detection through percutaneous needle biopsies is considered the gold standard for cancer diagnoses and thus for obtaining good health outcomes. This project seeks to ameliorate health disparities by making it possible for general practitioners and other health professionals to perform image-guided needle biopsies in their own office or clinic rather than sending patients with suspect lesions to distant centers. Th key enabling technology is an ultrasound-based guidance system designed to provide intuitive and reliable in-situ guidance that can be used by interventionalists with minimal training, allowing doctors to perform needle biopsies on patients in their own clinic or office. The project consists of three aims. The first aim will develop and evaluate an easy-to-use guidance system for targeted needle biopsy by focusing on the development of the guidance platform itself, including device construction, internal calibration, interfaces to the ultrasound system, and the development of several guidance modes. The second aim will extend guidance system with registration between pre-operative CT and ultrasound foriImage-guided interventions, by providing new algorithms for ultrasound- and surface- to CT registration, making it possible for expert annotations of critical structures to be transferred to the guidance system directly. The third aim will evaluate the system on phantom models and in a pilot animal study by practitioners of varying skill and training levels, and comparing it to state-of-the-art guidance systems. The third aim includes the creation of a health disparity advisory board to guide the further development of the device for deployment to reduce health disparities in rural and underserved populations.