MR Safe Robot, FDA Clearance, Safety and Feasibility of Prostate Biopsy Clinical Trial

Compatibility of mechatronic devices with the MR environment has been a very challenging engineering task. After over a decade of developments, we report the successful translation to clinical trials of our MR safe robot technology. MrBot is a six degree of freedom, pneumatically actuated robot for transperineal prostate percutaneous access, built exclusively of electrically nonconductive and nonmagnetic materials. Its extensive preclinical tests have been previously reported. Here, we present the latest technology developments, an overview of the regulatory protocols, and technically related results of the clinical trial. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the MrBot for the biopsy trial, which was successfully performed in five patients. With no trajectory corrections and no unsuccessful attempts to target a site, the robot achieved an MRI-based needle targeting accuracy of 2.55 mm. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first robot approved by the FDA for the MR environment. The results confirm that it is possible to perform safe and accurate robotic manipulation in the MRI scanner, and the development of MR safe robots is no longer a daunting technical challenge.