A novel four-wire-driven robotic catheter for radio-frequency ablation treatment

作者：Yoshimitsu Kitaro^*; Kato Takahisa; Song Sang Eun; Hata Nobuhiko

来源：International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery, 2014, 9(5): 867-874.

DOI：10.1007/s11548-014-0982-3

• Flexible manipulator
• Four-wire-driven
• Medical robot
• Quad-directional structure
• Robotic catheter
• Robotic surgery

Robotic catheters have been proposed to increase the efficacy and safety of the radio-frequency ablation treatment. The robotized motion of current robotic catheters mimics the motion of manual ones-namely, deflection in one direction and rotation around the catheter. With the expectation that the higher dexterity may achieve further efficacy and safety of the robotically driven treatment, we prototyped a four-wire-driven robotic catheter with the ability to deflect in two- degree-of-freedom motions in addition to rotation.
A novel quad-directional structure with two wires was designed and developed to attain yaw and pitch motion in the robotic catheter. We performed a mechanical evaluation of the bendability and maneuverability of the robotic catheter and compared it with current manual catheters.
We found that the four-wire-driven robotic catheter can achieve a pitching angle of 184.7 at a pulling distance of wire for 11 mm, while the yawing angle was 170.4 at 11 mm. The robotic catheter could attain the simultaneous two- degree-of-freedom motions in a simulated cardiac chamber.
The results indicate that the four-wire-driven robotic catheter may offer physicians the opportunity to intuitively control a catheter and smoothly approach the focus position that they aim to ablate.

• 出版日期2014-9