An Image-Guided Robotic System for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: System Development and Experimental Evaluation

Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a noninvasive medical procedure that can modulate brain activity, and it is widely used in neuroscience, neurology research, and clinical practice. Compared to manual operators, robots may improve the outcome due to their superior accuracy and repeatability. Howe...

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Published in:IEEE robotics and automation letters Vol. 10; no. 2; pp. 1936 - 1943
Main Authors: Liu, Yihao, Zhang, Jiaming, Ai, Letian, Tian, Jing, Sefati, Shahriar, Liu, Huan, Martin-Gomez, Alejandro, Kheradmand, Amir, Armand, Mehran
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 01.02.2025
Subjects:
Accuracy
Brain
Coils
Electric fields
Medical robots and systems
Motors
Planning
Robot kinematics
Robot sensing systems
robotics and automation in life sciences
Robots
software tools for robot programming
ISSN:2377-3766, 2377-3766
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Abstract Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a noninvasive medical procedure that can modulate brain activity, and it is widely used in neuroscience, neurology research, and clinical practice. Compared to manual operators, robots may improve the outcome due to their superior accuracy and repeatability. However, there has not been a widely accepted standard protocol for performing robotic TMS using fine-segmented brain images, resulting in arbitrary planned angles with respect to the true boundaries of the modulated cortex. Given that the recent study in TMS simulation suggests a noticeable difference in outcomes when using different anatomical details, cortical shape should play a more significant role in deciding the optimal TMS coil pose. In this work, we introduce an image-guided robotic system for TMS that focuses on (1) establishing standardized planning methods to define a reference (true zero) for the coil poses and (2) solving the issue that the manual coil placement requires expert hand-eye coordination which often leading to low repeatability of the experiments. To validate the design of our robotic system, a phantom study and a preliminary human subject study were performed. Our results show that the robotic method can half the positional error and improve the rotational accuracy by up to two orders of magnitude. The accuracy is proven to be repeatable because the standard deviation of multiple trials is lowered by an order of magnitude. The improved actuation accuracy successfully translates to the TMS application, with a higher and more stable induced voltage in magnetic field sensors and a higher electromyography (EMG) reading in the preliminary human subject study.
AbstractList Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a noninvasive medical procedure that can modulate brain activity, and it is widely used in neuroscience, neurology research, and clinical practice. Compared to manual operators, robots may improve the outcome due to their superior accuracy and repeatability. However, there has not been a widely accepted standard protocol for performing robotic TMS using fine-segmented brain images, resulting in arbitrary planned angles with respect to the true boundaries of the modulated cortex. Given that the recent study in TMS simulation suggests a noticeable difference in outcomes when using different anatomical details, cortical shape should play a more significant role in deciding the optimal TMS coil pose. In this work, we introduce an image-guided robotic system for TMS that focuses on (1) establishing standardized planning methods to define a reference (true zero) for the coil poses and (2) solving the issue that the manual coil placement requires expert hand-eye coordination which often leading to low repeatability of the experiments. To validate the design of our robotic system, a phantom study and a preliminary human subject study were performed. Our results show that the robotic method can half the positional error and improve the rotational accuracy by up to two orders of magnitude. The accuracy is proven to be repeatable because the standard deviation of multiple trials is lowered by an order of magnitude. The improved actuation accuracy successfully translates to the TMS application, with a higher and more stable induced voltage in magnetic field sensors and a higher electromyography (EMG) reading in the preliminary human subject study.
Author Armand, Mehran
Zhang, Jiaming
Liu, Huan
Liu, Yihao
Kheradmand, Amir
Tian, Jing
Martin-Gomez, Alejandro
Sefati, Shahriar
Ai, Letian
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Snippet Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a noninvasive medical procedure that can modulate brain activity, and it is widely used in neuroscience, neurology...
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StartPage 1936
SubjectTerms Accuracy
Brain
Coils
Electric fields
Medical robots and systems
Motors
Planning
Robot kinematics
Robot sensing systems
robotics and automation in life sciences
Robots
software tools for robot programming
Title An Image-Guided Robotic System for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: System Development and Experimental Evaluation
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