Continuous-curvature path planning for endovascular catheterization

Navigation guidance can mitigate the skill and experience requirements for percutaneous treatment of Chronic Total Occlusions (CTOs). Planning for an appropriate path for flexible catheters safely is one of the major challenges for endovascular catheterization. However, state of the art publications rarely consider kinematic constraints (e.g. curvature limitation). In our previous work, we proposed a fast path planning approach under curvature constraints, and the approach explores a path along the vascular centerline-based structure and locally optimizes the path to satisfy curvature constrains. Furthermore, we develop the path planning approach in this work, ensuring the continuity of curvature at coincident points between the vascular centerline and the locally optimized path. Particularly, the present work focuses on path planning under the framework of ATLAS project.