Needle Path Planning Method for Digital Breast Tomosynthesis Biopsy Based on Probabilistic Techniques

Needle insertion planning for breast biopsy has the potential to improve patient comfort and intervention safety. However, this is a challenging task because of the infinite possibilities of insertion points and the breast tissue deformations during the procedure. In this paper, we present a novel approach that couples probabilistic motion planning methods with Finite Element Simulation in order to find an optimal path taking breast deformation into account. This method reduces the error (i.e. the distance between the needle tip and the lesion) meanly by 80% and the proposed planner divides the planning time by 5 in comparison to a classic Rapidly-Exploring Random Tree planning method.