An accessible, hands-on tutorial system for image-guided therapy and medical robotics using a robot and open-source software

This paper describes a new open-source tutorial for image-guided therapy (IGT) and medical robotics that is both accessible and hands-on using the LEGO Mindstorms NXT (a commercially available robotics kit) and 3D Slicer (an open-source application for medical image processing). The tutorial covers all stages of a typical IGT or medical robotics procedure, including the concepts of imaging, preoperative planning, targeting and tracking, navigation and registration, by using the LEGO robot to perform a “needle biopsy” on a phantom (anatomical model) made of traditional LEGO pieces. In addition, this paper describes a C++ library that allows direct control of a LEGO Mindstorms NXT robot from a Linux computer over a USB connection.