Landing control of a magnetically actuated robotic catheter on beating heart surface

In this paper, the problem of a magnetically actuated robotic catheter landing on a beating heart surface for the robotic catheter ablation procedure is addressed. A landing control strategy that optimizes the catheter tip trajectories, leading to a stable tip-tissue contact and a safe ablation force level for a successful catheter ablation procedure is proposed. Specifically, an ablation phase analysis is presented that investigates the optimal catheter tip configuration and the timing of the landing, preparing for a stable and safe ablation force throughout the ablation phase. A reference trajectory generation algorithm and a decoupled landing control optimization are then proposed for respectively generating a series of desired tip trajectories and achieving the optimal tip configurations in a desired landing period. The simulation results using in vivo heart motion data are presented to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed methods.