Brillouin Needle Steering

Beveled needles deflect as they advance through tissue. By placing a Brillouin probe at the needle tip, the instrument senses the mechanical properties of tissue immediately ahead and uses that signal to guide steering toward — or around — structures of a given stiffness.

This couples a real-time optical measurement to a steering control loop, turning a passive biopsy needle into a stiffness-aware instrument.

Contributions

1. Integrated a fiber-coupled Brillouin probe into the needle tip.
2. Modeled the relationship between tip stiffness readings and deflection.
3. Closed the loop between optical sensing and steering actuation.