An Evolutionary-Optimized Surgical Path Planner for a Programmable Bevel-Tip Needle

Path planning algorithms for steerable needles in medical applications must guarantee the anatomical obstacle avoidance, reduce the insertion length, and ensure the compliance with the needle kinematics. The majority of the solutions from the literature focus either on fast computation or on path optimality, the former at the expense of suboptimal paths, the latter by making unbearable the computation in case of a high-dimensional workspace. In this article, we implement a three-dimensional path planner for neurosurgical applications, which keeps the computational cost consistent with standard preoperative planning algorithms and fine-tunes the estimated pathways in accordance to multiple optimization objectives. From a user-defined entry point, our method confines a sample-based path search within a subsection of the original workspace considering the degree of curvature admitted by the needle. An evolutionary optimization procedure is used to maximize the obstacle avoidance and reduce the insertion length. The pool of optimized solutions is examined through a cost function to determine the best path. Simulations on one dataset showed the ability of the planner to save time and overcome the state of the art in terms of obstacle avoidance, insertion length, and probability of failure, proving this algorithm as a valid planning method for complex environments.