A multiple closed-loops robotic calibration for accurate surgical puncture.

Background: Robotic puncture system increasingly demands stringent standard in target location accuracy. The positional and orientational transformation relationships among all components of the system are supposed to be calibrated and identified preoperatively.

Aims: The target location performance is directly determined by the calibration result. Therefore, a multiple closed-loops calibration approach is proposed to achieve high-level calibration accuracy in robotic puncture system. MATERIALS & METHODS: This method takes as input the three-dimensional position information of the retro-reflective markers mounted on the surgical tool, which is detected by the optical tracking system in real time during robotic movement. There is less complicated mathematical derivation and calculation in the presented algorithm by applying the closed-loop principle.

Results: Experimental results validate that it can achieve accurate robotic target location with less input data and computation-cost, satisfying the clinical puncture requirements.

Discussion: The spatial calibration between robotic arm and optical tracking system efficiently realised by the presented approach present an alternative which can be safely applied to the robotic puncture system for accurate insertion.

Conclusion: Overall, a multiple closed-loops calibration approach is proposed in this work, which may increase surgical efficiency.