Feedback force evaluation for a novel robotic catheter navigation system

In Vascular Interventional Surgery (VIS), the surgeons are exposed to X-ray threatening the surgeons' health due to the depositing which lasts long. It is significant to find a method to keep away from X-ray during VIS. In this paper, a novel master-slave robotic catheter system for VIS has been proposed. The surgeon operates a real catheter on the master side, which can make full use of the natural catheter manipulation experience and skills obtained in conventional catheter navigation. The feedback of catheter operating force on the master side plays an important role in improving the safety of the vascular surgery. In order to realize the force feedback, a damper is used based on the intelligent fluid magnetorheological (MR) fluid. The damper is a piston structure with MR fluid. It 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 feedback force evaluation experiments of the damper were done. The experimental results indicated that the damper was effective for realizing the force feedback of the master-slave system. It can provide force feedback to the surgeon in real time.