It is a great pleasure to inform you that I will defend my HDR on the 28th of October at 2 pm.

I will present my work entitled “Shared control strategy for needle insertion into deformable tissue using inverse Finite Element simulation” to the committee composed by:

– Kenny Erlebern, Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen, Reviewer

– Sarthak Misra, Professor, University of Twente, Reviewer

– Danail Stoyanov, Professor, University College London, Reviewer

– Stéphane Cotin, Research Director, Inria Strasbourg, Examiner

– Jocelyne Troccaz, Research Director, CNRS/University of Grenoble, President

– Bernard Bayle, Professor, University of Strasbourg, Guarantor

The defense and the committee will be entirely online. If you wish to attend the presentation, you can connect on the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EzDZKLuygU

In addition, for those who are in Strasbourg, you can also attend the defense in person at IHU, room Hygie.

Best regards

Hadrien.

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Abstract

Percutaneous medical procedures using surgical needles are among the least invasive approaches to accessing deep internal structures of organs without damaging surrounding tissues. Unlike traditional open surgery, these approaches only affect a localized area around the needle, reducing trauma and risks of complications. These treatments also offer new solutions for tumors or metastases for which traditional methods may be contraindicated.

Our project aims to develop new solutions for the control of medical robots interacting with soft tissues. This work is motivated by recent advances in medical simulation, achieving sufficient realism to help surgeons during the operation. These simulations can be used for surgeons’ training and provide visual assistance during the procedure when combined with Augmented Reality. Therefore, the maturity of these techniques now suggests the possibility of using FE simulation to control a robotic system for needle insertion procedures. It is a real challenge because, in general, very little information can be extracted in real-time from images during an intervention.

The originality of our approach lies in the fact that we will address the deformation problem using inverse real-time finite element simulations in the control loop of the robot. It represents critical scientific obstacles for achieving an optimal compromise between models’ accuracy and the speed of the simulations predicting the interaction of soft tissues and needles. We show that even minimal knowledge of the mechanical behavior of structures associated with the use of images can make it possible and allow a robot to reach a pre-identified target during a planning stage without human intervention.