Patent ID: 8444543

Claim:
An apparatus for performing brachytherapy, comprising: a robotic assembly having a needle guide for guiding a brachytherapy needle during its insertion into a target volume of a patient, said robotic assembly being controllable to control the position and orientation of said needle guide in relation to said patient, said needle guide permitting manual longitudinal movement of said brachytherapy needle by an operator; a computing device in communication with said robotic assembly, said computing device storing a dose distribution for the target volume, said dose distribution comprising a set of planned needle trajectories, at least one of said planned needle trajectories being oblique with respect to other planned needle trajectories and a planned distribution of seeds along each of said planned needle trajectories, said computing device controlling said robotic assembly to position said needle guide in accordance with the set of planned needle trajectories of said dose distribution; and a three-dimensional ultrasound transducer for capturing volume data of said target volume, said computing device being in communication with and receiving said volume data from said ultrasound transducer, said computing device processing said volume data to determine an actual distribution of said seeds along actual needle trajectories, and dynamically adjusting the dose distribution to target cold spots and/or to compensate for deviations between actual needle trajectories and planned needle trajectories and/or shifting of the target volume.