A system for catheter tracking using magnetic resonance

Abstract

MRI guidance of surgical and diagnostic tools is a topic of active research. This thesis describes a system developed in a collaborative effort between BioTex, the MD Anderson Cancer Center and Texas A&M to monitor the position and orientation of a straight, rigid interventional device. In minimally invasive thermal ablation procedures, tracking is needed to determine the position and orientation of the device outside the brain for insertion, locate and orient a catheter tip inside the brain, detect movement of an optical fiber placed inside the brain for laser based thermal therapy, and detect patient movement. The position tracking is based on the detection of one or two fiducial coils (gradient localization). Using two fiducial coils, experiments show successful tracking of the position of the device with a MSE of 0.202mm and with an update speed presently set to 1.5s. The developments have been made using National Instruments' (Austin, Texas) LabVIEW and PCI-6034E DAQ Board. The MR system consists of a 4.7 T/33 cm bore superconducting magnet and an Omega MRI system.