A novel catheter operating robot for vascular interventional surgery

VIS (Vascular Interventional Surgery) is widely used for Cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular disease. Considering conventional VIS has some problems, such as long irradiation time and surgical complexity, a robotic surgical system has been developed to assist surgeon during operation. In this paper, a novel COR (catheter operating robot) is developed to operate catheter, i.e., apply conventional push, pull, and twist of a catheter's shaft. Considering the limitation on the COR volume in clinical operation environment, the design concept of “part reuse” is proposed to realize the miniaturization of the mechanical structure. In order to reduce the number of machine parts, an intermittent gear is used both to realize the clamping/loosening movement and to perform as a slideway to fulfill the twist movement of two bionic fingers. A clamping/loosening module is devised out of the same purpose, so as to dismantle the catheter easily and ensure the catheter operating system can be removed from the catheter rapidly when the robot is out of service unexpectedly. Performance evaluation of the system was assessed by first conducting positioning accuracy experiment to quantify accuracy and precision of both axial (push and pull) and radial (twist) motion of catheter in control of the COR, and then conducting transparent glass vascular model experiment to assess the usefulness of the COR in robot-assisted VIS. Experimental results show that the COR has multiple advantages such as flexible control, and high positioning precision, which facilitate the control of catheter.