MORE | Spring 2020

Needle Tracking System

Health icon, disabled. A red heart with a cardiac rhythm running through it.

The motivation for the project is to design a method for tracking a needle, steered by permanent magnets, inside the human body while performing targeted drug delivery. A small tube will trail the needle while it makes its way to a tumor site and is also used as part of the tracking method. By knowing the length of the tube inside the body and direction/orientation of the needle, its location can be estimated using Simulink. The orientation can be calculated from the known orientation/position of the permanent magnets. A model in Simulink shows tracking capability given tube length and magnet orientation.

Student researcher

Dakota Edwards

Mechanical engineering

Hometown: Tempe, Arizona, United States

Graduation date: Spring 2020