BACKGROUND To retrospectively evaluate the association between possible influencing factors and failed first attempts to inject a contrast agent intra-articularly under ultrasound (US)-guidance for direct magnetic resonance (MR) arthrography of the hip joint. METHODS Ninety consecutive patients (38 women and 52 men; mean age, 42 years) undergoing US-guided hip MR arthrography (3 bilaterally) ...

This paper presents a concept of automatic needle placement for brachytherapy. For the success of this minimally invasive treatment, a precise and safe placement of needles inside soft tissue is fundamental. The presented concept incorporates information about the needle as well as the tissue to find a suitable needle trajectory. A patientspecific tissue model is derived from different imaging ...

Steerable needles are a promising technology to provide safe deployment of tools through complex anatomy in minimally invasive surgery, including tumor-related diagnoses and therapies. For the 3-D localization these instruments soft tissue, fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) based reconstruction methods have gained popularity because inherent advantages optical fibers clinical setting, such as flexibi...

Pain resulting from needle injection is a serious problem for patients that self-administer medication at home. We studied impressions of needle use by comparing PenNeedle® 32G Taper (NovoFine® 32G Tip), developed to reduce the sense of fear and pain of injection, with a conventional needle, in children self-injecting GH. A total of 34 patients self-injected themselves with needles coupled with...

PURPOSE Conventional transrectal ultrasound guided high-dose-rate prostate brachytherapy (HDR-BT) uses an axially acquired image set for organ segmentation and 2D sagittal images for needle segmentation. Sagittally reconstructed 3D (SR3D) transrectal ultrasound enables both organ and needle segmentation and has the potential to reduce organ-needle alignment uncertainty. This study compares the ...

The construction of a conventional prostate needle (seeds) implant template restricts needles tilting or incline insertion when it is necessary to approach a seminal vesicle or to avoid the obstruction of symphysis pubis. To overcome the disadvantages of conventional templates, we developed a special template for guiding needles incline insertion and fixation for prostate needle implant. Phanto...