A novel master-slave robotic catheter system for Vascular Interventional Surgery

In minimally invasive surgery, the surgeons are exposed to X-ray, threatening the surgeons' health due to depositing long. It is important to find a method instead of using X-ray during Vascular Interventional Surgery (VIS). In this paper, a novel master-slave robotic catheter system for VIS has been proposed. The surgeons operate a real catheter on the master side, which can make full use of the natural catheter manipulation skills obtained in conventional catheter navigation. And the acquired operating information can be transmitted into the master controller. The control information from the master controller can be sent into slave controller. According to the control information, the slave controller can control the slave manipulator to operate catheter insert into the blood vessel during VIS. The operating force of catheter by slave manipulator can be acquired into the slave controller and be sent to the master controller. A novel type of master manipulator we proposed is based on the principle of magnetorheological fluid. A piston structure filled with magnetorheological fluid can transmit the force feedback to surgeon's hand through the operating catheter from the control of master controller, which seems that the surgeon operates the catheter beside the patient. The communication method and control strategy of designed system have been used in our previous developed system. Theoretical analysis of the designed system was done. The analyzed results indicated that the proposed robotic catheter system was effective for vascular interventional surgery. It can provide force feedback to surgeon in real time.