Telemanipulated Vascular Intervention System for Minimally Invasive Surgery

Minimally invasive surgery, as a promising treatment method for coronary heart disease and intracranial aneurysm, has received extensive research interest due to its appealing characteristics, e.g., the little surgical trauma, short rehabilitation time, determined curative effect, and less pain. However, the accumulated X-ray radiation during the percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and neurovascular intervention (NVI) greatly increases the probability of medical staff suffering from cataracts and brain tumors. In this article, the telemanipulated vascular intervention (TVI) system is presented, a compact and versatile vascular interventional system. The TVI system comprised of a leader joystick, a follower delivery device, and a graphical user interface is designed for intravascular delivery during the robot-assisted PCI and robot-assisted NVI. The performance of the TVI system is evaluated by demonstrating its ability to achieve telemanipulated navigation in the real-sized 3D cardio-cerebrovascular model with coronary stenosis and intracranial aneurysms. The experimental results demonstrate that the TVI system can navigate to 3 types of coronary stenosis, 6 types of cerebral artery, and an intracranial aneurysm with a diameter of 8 mm. To further demonstrate the performance of the TVI system, the robot-assisted renal artery angioplasty is conducted in a rabbit model for preclinical evaluation. These promising results indicate that the TVI system is capable of precisely manipulating the guidewire remotely, mitigating the health risks associated with prolonged exposure to X-ray radiation for interventionists.