Friction Analysis in Needle Insertion Into Soft Tissue

Abstract

As one of the preoperative diagnostic methods, needle insertion is widely used for its safety and effectiveness. Recently, robotic needle insertion systems have been under active developments. Hence needle insertion experiments are essential for system verifications, in which the interactions between needle and tissue is a major focus for needle-tissue interactive models, and the friction between the needle and tissue is an important factor. In these experiments, the friction coefficient can be affected by many factors, such as insertion speed, needle-tissue deformation and contact forces. In this paper, to study and analyze the influence of various variables on friction force and friction coefficient, three variables, i.e., tissue pressure on needle, needle insertion velocity and Young’s modulus of the tissue, are systematically studied by constructing a testbed, in which the radial surface friction is converted into equivalent plane friction based on the assumption that the distribution of the normal force and friction force on the needle is uniform for the whole needle outer surface. The experimental results show that the variation range of friction coefficient is 0.122–0.341. The friction coefficient decreases with the increase of pressure and increases with the increase of velocity, while Young’s modulus have a small effect on the friction coefficient.