A CT-guided Control Framework of a Robotic Flexible Endoscope for the Diagnosis of the Maxillary Sinusitis

Flexible endoscopes are commonly adopted in narrow and confined anatomical cavities due to their higher reachability and dexterity. However, prolonged and unintuitive manipulation of these endoscopes leads to an increased workload on surgeons and risks of collision. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a CT-guided control framework for the diagnosis of maxillary sinusitis by using a robotic flexible endoscope. In the CT-guided control framework, a feasible path to the target position in the maxillary sinus cavity for the robotic flexible endoscope is designed. Besides, an optimal control scheme is proposed to autonomously control the robotic flexible endoscope to follow the feasible path. This greatly improves the efficiency and reduces the workload for surgeons. Several experiments were conducted based on a widely utilized sinus phantom, and the results showed that the robotic flexible endoscope can accurately and autonomously follow the feasible path and reach the target position in the maxillary sinus cavity. The results also verified the feasibility of the CT-guided control framework, which contributes an effective approach to early diagnosis of sinusitis in the future.