A Smartphone and Permanent Magnet-based Needle Guidance System

The use of an image-guided percutaneous needlebased method is on the rise. The accuracy of this method is highly depended on the placement of needle. An accurate placement minimizes patient risks and improves their health outcome. Combining this method with a needle guidance system allows the accuracy to improve significantly. In this paper, we developed a low-cost needle guidance system based on a magnet and smartphone to improve the accuracy of image-guided percutaneous needle-based method. The developed system can achieve tracking for both translation and angulation. The open air tests show that the system has an average radial error of 0.83 mm for translation tracking. For angulation tracking, the average errors were 0.71° and 0.61° for left-right angulation and anterior-posterior angulation, respectively. The accuracy is comparable to some commercially available tracking devices. The proposed method shows enormous potential for various clinical applications.