Design and performance evaluation of a novel robotic catheter system for vascular interventional surgery

Vascular interventional surgery (VIS) is an effective treatment method for vascular diseases. However, there are many problems in traditional VIS, such as surgeons are radiated by X-ray, the lack of well skilled surgeons, the security of the surgery will be reduced due to the Surgeons’ fatigue, high risk of the surgery. To solve these problems, a robotic catheter system is needed to protect the surgeons and enhance the safety of the surgery. In this paper, a novel robotic catheter system with master–slave structure for VIS has been developed. This system is designed with the consideration of the operation method in traditional VIS, which allows the surgeon to operate a real catheter on the master side, then the surgeon make full use of the natural catheter manipulation experience and skills obtained in conventional catheter operation. The salve manipulator operates the catheter insert into the blood vessel with following the operation of the surgeon, and the operating force of the salve manipulator is detected. On the master side, a novel damper-based magnetorheological (MR) fluid is designed to realize the force feedback, which is also used to reappear the operation force from the salve manipulator. The damper connected directly with real catheter is a piston structure using the MR fluid to realize the force feedback. It can transmit the feedback force to surgeon’s hand through the operating catheter connected with damper, which seems that the surgeon operates the catheter beside the patient. The operating transparency of the developed system has been enhanced. The mechanism of the developed system has been introduced in detail. Performance evaluation experiments for the developed robotic catheter system have been done. The experimental results indicated that the developed robotic catheter system is fit for VIS.