Improved Potential-Field-Based Planning for Robotic Bronchoscopy

The optimal path is crucial for the success of bronchoscopy intervention surgery. During preoperative examination, the surgeon plans an intervention path to ensure smooth access for the flexible endoscope to the lesion site. However, in clinical settings, experience accumulation and operational training are the main basis for surgeons to plan the intervention path of flexible endoscopes, which is subjective and lacks scientific basis. To improve the safety and accessibility of the intervention path, this paper proposes an improved potential field method based on central multi nodes (CMN-PFM). This algorithm includes multi-scale constraints based on structural characteristics of airways, which can be beneficial for determining the optimal path among multiple potential paths. Meanwhile, this algorithm can effectively solve the problems of local minimization and oscillations. The experimental results show that the CMN-PFM algorithm has excellent planning performance and can be applied to clinical medical data to design the optimal path for robotic flexible endoscopes.