Kinematic Modelling of a New 5-DOF (Axis) Parallel Robot Used in Brachytherapy

The paper presents a new medical parallel robot for brachytherapy. Brachytherapy (BT) is a relatively new and efficient medical technique for cancer treatment that enables to deliver higher doses of radiation to more-specific areas of the body, compared to the conventional form of radiation therapy that projects radiation from a machine outside the body. BT implies the implant of radioactive seeds inside the tumor, through specific needles, thus affecting only the tumor while avoiding unnecessary irradiation of the healthy tissue. Compared to the most of the brachytherapy designed only for treating the prostate, the medical robot presented in the paper is designed for hard-to-reach areas (such as the retroperitoneal area or the mediastinum). An approach regarding the robot structural synthesis, kinematics is presented followed by some simulation results obtained for a specific BT needle trajectory.