Towards Vacuum Assisted Robotic Needle Interventions: From Fluid Aspiration to Tissue Biopsy

Needle based interventions are used for various diagnostic and therapeutic medical applications. Robotic needle interventions have an advantage of reducing errors due to hand tremor and other human artefacts, reducing unnecessary force and velocity variations and easy integration of imaging modalities. Robotic ultrasound guided needle interventions have primarily focused on target localization and accurate needle placement, while the subsequent acquisition of diagnostic material remains comparatively underexplored. Moreover, pleural fluid aspiration and tissue biopsy are typically addressed as separate procedures, despite sharing common requirements for ultrasound guidance, safe access, and sample transport.

In this talk, I will present a unified robotic framework for ultrasound guided fluid and tissue extraction using a single vacuum-assisted end effector. he proposed system combines force-controlled ultrasound scanning, semantic target identification, automated needle deployment, and procedure specific material acquisition. A coaxial needle assembly and shared pump assisted pathway enable direct pleural fluid aspiration, while controlled cannula actuation provides the additional cutting action required for solid-tissue acquisition.