Forward-looking Intravascular Ultrasound Catheter with an Electromagnetic Micro-Motor

Current commercial side-looking intravascular ultrasound catheter utilizes long flexible shaft to rotate the transducer for intravascular imaging. However, due to the characteristic of the side-looking intravascular ultrasound catheter, it cannot be used for imaging of chronic total occlusion. Furthermore, using an external motor to drive the transducer will cause non-uniform imaging distortion. An effective way to solve these problems is directly driving a forward-looking transducer to work by using a distal micro-motor. In this study, a catheter consists of an electromagnetic motor and a high-frequency forward-looking transducer was developed. The ionic liquid was used as the wire to connect the transducer and the ground. The prototype of catheter that fabricated in this study has a 2 mm outer diameter, and the motor has a maximal speed of the 275 PRS.