Steerable Needles

A steerable, MRI-guided needle-size robot would access the hippocampus through the foramen ovale, a natural opening in the cheek. A team of engineers and neurosurgery faculty is taking the next steps to develop this less invasive procedure for treating temporal lobe epilepsy. A Vanderbilt research team has received a $2… Read More

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… Read More

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. Read More