Magnetic Resonance Propulsion, Control and Tracking at 24 Hz of an Untethered Device in the Carotid Artery of a Living Animal: An Important Step in the Development of Medical Micro- and Nanorobots

Our recent demonstration of a ferromagnetic bead being navigated automatically inside the carotid artery of a living animal at an average speed of 10 cm/s using a clinical MRI system may be considered as a significant step in the field of medical micro- and nanorobotics. This is particularly true when we consider that an appropriate tracking method was embedded in the closed-loop control process allowing the blood vessels to be considered as navigational routes, providing maximum access for conducting operations inside the human body. But more importantly, this demonstration not only validates preliminary theoretical models but provides us with initial insights about the strategies and approaches that are likely to be used to navigate under computer control, micro- and nanodevices including nanorobots from the largest to the smallest diameter blood vessels that could be used to reach targets inside the human body. Here, based on these initial experimental data obtained in vivo, such strategies and methods are briefly described with some initial design concepts of medical interventional micro- and nanorobots.