Interventional Surgical Robot System Research Articles

Design and evaluation of a wearable vascular interventional surgical robot system.

Remote-controlled robotic vascular interventional surgery can reduce radiation exposure to interventional physicians and improve safety. However, inconvenient operation and lack of force feedback limit its application. A new wearable robotic system for vascular interventional surgery is designed, which is more flexible in operation. It ensures the safety of surgery through haptic force feedback. The system was evaluated by human vascular models and animal experiments. The average static error of the system is 0.048mm when the axial motion is 250mm and 1.259° when the rotational motion is 400°. The average error of the force feedback is 0.021N. The results of vascular model experiments and animal experiments demonstrate the feasibility and safety of the system. The proposed robotic system can assist physicians in remotely delivering standard catheters or guidewires. The system is more flexible and uses haptic force feedback to ensure surgical safety.

Novel Endovascular Interventional Surgical Robotic System Based on Biomimetic Manipulation

Endovascular therapy has emerged as a crucial therapeutic method for treating vascular diseases. Endovascular surgical robots have been used to enhance endovascular therapy. However, to date, there are no universal endovascular surgical robots that support molds of different types of devices for treating vascular diseases. We developed a novel endovascular surgical robotic system that can independently navigate the intravascular region, advance and retract devices, and deploy stents. This robot has four features: (1) The bionic design of the robot can fully simulate the entire grasping process; (2) the V-shaped relay gripper waived the need to redesign special guidewires and catheters for continuous rotation; (3) the handles designed based on the feedback mechanism can simulate push resistance and reduce iatrogenic damage; and (4) the detachable design of the grippers can reduce cross-infection risk and medical costs. We verified its performance by demonstrating six different types of endovascular surgeries. Early evaluation of the novel endovascular robotic system demonstrated its practicability and safety in endovascular surgeries.

A Surgeon’s Habits-Based Novel Master Manipulator for the Vascular Interventional Surgical Master-Slave Robotic System

A master-slave vascular interventional surgical robotic system (MSVISRs) promises to treat cardio-cerebrovascular diseases without damaging the health of surgeons. Although many scholars are engaged in the research on the slave manipulator for the MSVISRs, there are very few studies on the master manipulator. In this study, a surgeon’s habits-based novel master manipulator is developed. This master manipulator imitates the operating habits of surgeons in surgery and uses a non-contact method with an optical mouse sensor to measure the operating displacements. The novelty of this approach is that this master manipulator with smaller size and non-contact displacement measurement method can provide the axial force and the circumferential force feedback independently. In this master manipulator, the rigid-flexible coupling structure is used to provide the axial force feedback. In addition, the brush DC motor is used to give the circumferential force feedback. Furthermore, the proposed master manipulator is calibrated and evaluated by experiments. The calibration experiments show that the maximum identification ranges for the axial force and circumferential force in the proposed master manipulator are 0.247-4.5N and 0.52-4.3N, respectively. Moreover, the evaluation experiments show that the maximum error is 0.8 mm in the axial direction. As compared with other master manipulator, the comprehensive properties of this novel master manipulator are shown to be better and more promising.

Design and analysis of positioning manipulator structure for vascular interventional surgery robot system

The positioning manipulator is an important part of the minimally invasive vascular interventional surgical robot system. In order to make the surgical robot system have high safety, convenience and accuracy, this paper designs a modular light weight manipulator as a positioning manipulator, which is used to realize the positioning and movement of the propulsion device. First, according to the requirements of the operation, the degree of freedom and configuration method of the manipulator are determined, and the configuration design and parameter selection of the manipulator are completed. Then, according to the structural characteristics of the articulated robot, the D-H parameter method and the inverse transformation method are used to analyze the kinematics of the manipulator and its working space are analyzed. On this basis, the manipulator is analyzed by finite element and verified by static simulation. Finally, the positioning manipulator can realize the function of dragging in its working space by hand to achieve the target pose.

A Vascular Interventional Surgical Robotic System Based on Force-Visual Feedback

In this paper, based on the previous research of our research team. We proposed a Vascular Interventional Surgical Robotic System based on Force-Visual feedback. In the process of vascular interventional surgery, it is very important to accurately detect the resistance force of surgical catheter, which can improve the safety of operation. Therefore, we developed a force sensor for the vascular interventional surgery robotic system based on the principle of resistance strain gauge bridge circuit. In addition, a complete robotic system with only force feedback is not enough. Therefore, it is necessary to combine the visual feedback interface to complete the operation. Finally, some verification experiments have been completed, including the evaluation experiment of the internal fixture of the force sensor, the calibration experiment of the force sensor, the evaluation experiment of the force sensor, the evaluation experiment of the force feedback, The axial and radial synchronous motion experiment between the master and slave side. Experimental results showed that the feasibility of the force sensor. Vascular Interventional Surgical Robotic System based on Force-Visual feedback has good performance of the force feedback and the synchronous motion between the master and slave side. There is a certain error in the synchronous motion between the master and slave side and the force feedback of the vascular interventional surgery robotic system based on Force-Visual feedback, the error is within the allowable range.

Design and Performance Evaluation of Real-time Endovascular Interventional Surgical Robotic System with High Accuracy.

Endovascular interventional surgery (EIS) is performed under a high radiation environment at the sacrifice of surgeons' health. This paper introduces a novel endovascular interventional surgical robot that aims to reduce radiation to surgeons and physical stress imposed by lead aprons during fluoroscopic X-ray guided catheter intervention. The unique mechanical structure allowed the surgeon to manipulate the axial and radial motion of the catheter and guide wire. Four catheter manipulators (to manipulate the catheter and guide wire), and a control console which consists of four joysticks, several buttons and two twist switches (to control the catheter manipulators) were presented. The entire robotic system was established on a master-slave control structure through CAN (Controller Area Network) bus communication, meanwhile, the slave side of this robotic system showed highly accurate control over velocity and displacement with PID controlling method. The robotic system was tested and passed in vitro and animal experiments. Through functionality evaluation, the manipulators were able to complete interventional surgical motion both independently and cooperatively. The robotic surgery was performed successfully in an adult female pig and demonstrated the feasibility of superior mesenteric and common iliac artery stent implantation. The entire robotic system met the clinical requirements of EIS. The results show that the system has the ability to imitate the movements of surgeons and to accomplish the axial and radial motions with consistency and high-accuracy.

Study on real-time force feedback for a master-slave interventional surgical robotic system.

In robot-assisted catheterization, haptic feedback is important, but is currently lacking. In addition, conventional interventional surgical robotic systems typically employ a master-slave architecture with an open-loop force feedback, which results in inaccurate control. We develop herein a novel real-time master-slave (RTMS) interventional surgical robotic system with a closed-loop force feedback that allows a surgeon to sense the true force during remote operation, provide adequate haptic feedback, and improve control accuracy in robot-assisted catheterization. As part of this system, we also design a unique master control handle that measures the true force felt by a surgeon, providing the basis for the closed-loop control of the entire system. We use theoretical and empirical methods to demonstrate that the proposed RTMS system provides a surgeon (using the master control handle) with a more accurate and realistic force sensation, which subsequently improves the precision of the master-slave manipulation. The experimental results show a substantial increase in the control accuracy of the force feedback and an increase in operational efficiency during surgery.

Study of the Operational Safety of a Vascular Interventional Surgical Robotic System.

This paper proposes an operation safety early warning system based on LabView (2014, National Instruments Corporation, Austin, TX, USA) for vascular interventional surgery (VIS) robotic system. The system not only provides intuitive visual feedback information for the surgeon, but also has a safety early warning function. It is well known that blood vessels differ in their ability to withstand stress in different age groups, therefore, the operation safety early warning system based on LabView has a vascular safety threshold function that changes in real-time, which can be oriented to different age groups of patients and a broader applicable scope. In addition, the tracing performance of the slave manipulator to the master manipulator is also an important index for operation safety. Therefore, we also transformed the slave manipulator and integrated the displacement error compensation algorithm in order to improve the tracking ability of the slave manipulator to the master manipulator and reduce master–slave tracking errors. We performed experiments “in vitro” to validate the proposed system. According to previous studies, 0.12 N is the maximum force when the blood vessel wall has been penetrated. Experimental results showed that the proposed operation safety early warning system based on LabView combined with operating force feedback can effectively avoid excessive collisions between the surgical catheter and vessel wall to avoid vascular puncture. The force feedback error of the proposed system is maintained between ±20 mN, which is within the allowable safety range and meets our design requirements. Therefore, the proposed system can ensure the safety of surgery.

Design and Analysis for Minimally Invasive Vascular Interventional Surgical Robot System

Design and Analysis for Minimally Invasive Vascular Interventional Surgical Robot System

Experimental study of angiography using vascular interventional robot

To assess the feasibility and safety of vascular interventional surgery by using vascular interventional robot system (VIRS). VIRS included image navigation systems and body propulsion systems, and adopted a master-slave structure. The surgeon sat at the master site, sending controlling instructions to the robot fixed at the slave site, and then the robot translated these instructions into catheter motion. A 3D vascular model was reconstructed so that the surgeon can perform surgical planning easily. In glass model and animal experiments, the surgeon remotely controlled VIRS, which inserted a catheter into predefined targets, and the catheter positioning error and robotic surgery time were measured. The robot was initially tested on a glass vascular model. Under robotic manipulation, the catheter could enter an arbitrary branch of the vascular model. The catheter positioning error was less than 1 mm. Then robotic interventional surgery was performed successfully in ten adult dogs. The renal artery and the vertebral artery angiography carried out smoothly without complication. Experiment took 35 minutes, and the time what staff exposed to the digital subtraction angiography (DSA) machine was 0 minute. Vascular interventional surgical robot system is safe and feasible, and can achieve the catheter remote operation, meet the requirements of angiography basically.