A Novel Real-Time Clip Force Measurement Device Design for Cerebral Aneurysm Surgeries

Abstract

Brain aneurysm is a balloon-like bulge of brain artery wall and may be ruptured easily causing cerebral hemorrhage with fatal consequences. For prevention of rupture of the aneurysm, clipping or coiling techniques are used. Clipping is the gold standard since coiling is not possible for some aneurysms. Neurosurgeons apply a suitable clip figure and aneurysm is ruptured under control. Since the permanent clips remain in the brain to close the artery wall after surgery, it is vital to press vein clipping with the correct force. This research aims to measure the clip closing force during the opening of the clip over the applicator. Hence, a clip force measurement system with single miniature load cell in one orthogonal direction was developed to enable measuring the closing force of the clip with higher accuracy at the time of opening the clip. Thanks to the miniature load cell, the mechanical design placed on the applicator made it possible to measure the force applied to the clip closing force. For placing this user friendly design onto the applicator, not obstructing the field of the neurosurgeon is also considered. The verification of the design has proven its ability of measuring the clip closing forces in real time by comparing the catalog values of the clips. Under the same experimental conditions, the closing forces for 10 clips in different figures were achieved with a maximum catalog value difference of 4.11%. Standard deviation of the results shows a very strong similarity between measurement and catalogue values.