Robotic CT-Guided Cannula Placement Shows Sub-Millimeter Precision in Phantom Models

The blood-brain barrier remains the most significant physiological obstacle in neuro-oncology, preventing the vast majority of systemic chemotherapeutics and biopharmaceuticals from reaching therapeutic concentrations within malignant tissue [1, 2]. Convection-enhanced delivery addresses this challenge by utilizing a pressure gradient to drive therapeutics directly into the brain parenchyma, bypassing systemic limitations and reducing off-target toxicity [3, 4]. While early-phase trials for diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma and recurrent glioblastoma have demonstrated the safety of this approach, achieving an adequate volume of distribution often requires multiple infusion sites to cover infiltrative tumor margins [5, 6]. However, the manual stereotactic placement of several catheters can be time-consuming and technically demanding, potentially limiting the clinical scalability of multi-port infusion protocols [7, 8]. To overcome these logistical hurdles, researchers recently evaluated whether integrating robotic assistance with intraoperative CT guidance could streamline this complex delivery process.