Robotic Curvilinear Laser Thermal Therapy Probe for Transforamenal Hippocampotomy

EasyChair Preprint no. 8301

Abstract

Surgical resection of the hippocampus can be a curative procedure for drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy; however, current rates of surgical resection are limited by perceived and real risks of undergoing neurosurgery. Laser Interstitial Thermal Therapy (LITT) is a less invasive alternative to surgical resection, but current tools are straight, rigid probes that can only be introduced through a cranial burr hole. In this work we demonstrate how helically pre-curved concentric tubes can be integrated with an IR laser system to perform ablation of the hippocampus through the foramen ovale, a natural opening in the facial skeletal structure. We demonstrate the ability of a helical needle to ablate a curved volume from a segmented MRI of a patient’s hippocampus, as well as the potential for coordinated control of the probe power and translation rate to create ablation zones of varying diameter. This work is a promising first step towards robotic LITT delivery for enhanced targeting of deep brain structures using a minimally-invasive approach.

Keyphrases: Laser Thermal Therapy, Minimally Invasive Therapy, MRI Compatible Robot, Steerable Needle

@Booklet{EasyChair:8301,
  author = {Daniel Esser and John Peters and Abby Grillo and Sarah Garrow and Tyler Ball and Robert Naftel and Dario Englot and Joseph Neimat and Will Grissom and Eric Barth and Robert Webster III},
  title = {Robotic Curvilinear Laser Thermal Therapy Probe for Transforamenal Hippocampotomy},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 8301},

  year = {EasyChair, 2022}}