‘steerable needles’
New $2 million NIH grant advances less invasive procedure for TLE
Feb. 16, 2021—A Vanderbilt research team has received a $2 million National Institutes of Health grant to further develop a needle-size robotic surgery system with real-time MRI guidance for drug resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Such a procedure has the potential to reduce or eliminate seizures using a minimally invasive approach over the current standard of care,...
NIH-funded collaboration to develop steerable robotic needles for lung biopsies
Nov. 8, 2017—What started as graduate school research with steerable needles in blocks of gelatin could help pulmonologists more accurately reach sites in the peripheral lung to biopsy them. A collaboration between that doctoral student – now Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Robert Webster; Dr. Fabien Maldonado a pulmonologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center; and a colleague...
Robot uses steerable needles to treat brain clots
Aug. 8, 2013—Professor Robert Webster and his team have developed a new image-guided surgical system that uses steerable needles to essentially suck out clots. Watch a video demo of the system in action and read the full story.