Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Ultra-High Field Strength Mr Image-Guided Robotic Needle Delivery Device For In-Bore Small Animal Interventions, Matthew J. Gravett

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Current methods of accurate soft tissue injections in small animals are prone to many sources of error. Although efforts have been made to improve the accuracy of needle deliveries, none of the efforts have provided accurate soft tissue references. An MR image-guided robot was designed to function inside the bore of a 9.4T MR scanner to accurately deliver needles to locations within the mouse brain. The robot was designed to have no noticeable negative effects on the image quality and was localized in the MR images through the use of an MR image visible fiducial. The robot was mechanically calibrated …