InterNAV2.0: Minimally Invasive Robot-Assisted Tumour Ablative Therapies

Canadian Snrgical Technologies & Advanced Robotics has undertaken a major initiative in the field of lung cancer treatment. A platform is being developed for tumour ablative therapies using minimally invasive robotic sys­ tems. As a proof-of-concept for the platform, a system has been built for Brachytherapy as a treatment for lung cancer. This system uses a navigational software, InterNAVl.0, to consolidate ultrasound imaging and electromagnetic positioning.Early work on InterNAVl.0 looked to develop a research tool to handle imaging information obtained through ultrasound imaging. It was not de­ signed as a navigation and control environment for clinical use. The objective of the research described in this thesis is to make significant enhancements and add new features to InterNAV1.0 in order to obtain a fairly general navi­ gation and control environment suitable for use in animal and clinical testing. This thesis discusses the development of InterNAV2.0 and includes a set of feature enhancements and architectural changes to InterNAVl.0 to address several shortcomings and make it applicable for clinical use. After an initial study of InterNAVl.O’s capabilities, several improvements were proposed and implemented. These included enhancements to the navigational model and user interface, integrated robotic controls, predictive neural networks, use of embedded sensors, and integration with dosimetry planning software. All of these functional enhancements are part of InterNAV2.0. Testing shows better results from InterNAV2.0 than InterNAV1.0.