Robotic needle guide for prostate brachytherapy: Clinical testing of feasibility and performance

Robotic needle positioning provided a means of compensating for needle deflections and the ability to intentionally place needles into areas between the standard template holes. To our knowledge, these results represent the first clinical testing of such a system. Future work will be incorporation of direct control of the robot by the physician, adding software algorithms to help avoid robot collisions with the ultrasound, and testing the angulation capability in the clinical setting.