Simultaneous Shape and Tip Force Sensing for the COAST Guidewire Robot.

Placement of catheters in minimally invasive cardiovascular procedures is preceded by navigating to the target lesion with a guidewire. Traversing through tortuous vascular pathways can be challenging without precise tip control, potentially resulting in the damage or perforation of blood vessels. To improve guidewire navigation, this paper presents 3D shape reconstruction and tip force sensing for the COaxially Aligned STeerable (COAST) guidewire robot using a triplet of adhered single core fiber Bragg grating sensors routed centrally through the robot's slender structure.

Model-based Design of the COAST Guidewire Robot for Large Deflection.

Minimally invasive endovascular procedures involve the manual placement of a guidewire, which is made difficult by vascular tortuosity and the lack of precise tip control. Steerable guidewire systems have been developed with tendon-driven, magnetic, and concentric tube actuation strategies to enable precise tip control, however, selecting machining parameters for such robots does not have a strict procedure. In this paper, we develop a systematic design procedure for selecting the tube pairs of the COaxially Aligned STeerable (COAST) guidewire robot.

Towards FBG-Based Shape Sensing for Micro-scale and Meso-Scale Continuum Robots with Large Deflection.

Endovascular and endoscopic surgical procedures require micro-scale and meso-scale continuum robotic tools to navigate complex anatomical structures. In numerous studies, fiber Bragg grating (FBG) based shape sensing has been used for measuring the deflection of continuum robots on larger scales, but has proved to be a challenge for micro-scale and meso-scale robots with large deflections. In this paper, we have developed a sensor by mounting an FBG fiber within a micromachined nitinol tube whose neutral axis is shifted to one side due to the machining.

Towards Patient-Specific 3D-Printed Robotic Systems for Surgical Interventions.

Surgical robots have been extensively researched for a wide range of surgical procedures due to the advantages of improved precision, sensing capabilities, motion scaling, and tremor reduction, to name a few. Though the underlying disease condition or pathology may be the same across patients, the intervention approach to treat the condition can vary significantly across patients. This is especially true for endovascular interventions, where each case brings forth its own challenges.

Impact of simulated MitraClip on forward flow obstruction in the setting of mitral leaflet tethering: An in vitro investigation.

Objectives: We aimed to evaluate diastolic leaflet tethering as a factor that may cause mitral stenosis (MS) after simulated MitraClip implantation, using an in vitro left heart simulator.

Background: Leaflet tethering commonly seen in functional mitral regurgitation may be a significant factor affecting the severity of MS after MitraClip implantation.

Methods: A left heart simulator with excised ovine mitral valves (N = 6), and custom edge-to-edge clip devices (GTclip) was used to mimic implantation of MitraClip in a variety of positions.