Toward cooperation of catheter and guidewire for remote-controlled vascular interventional robot

Remote-controlled vascular interventional surgery robots (RVIR) are being developed to reduce the occupational risk of the intervening physician, such as radiation, chronic neck and back pain, and increase accuracy and stability of surgery operation. Moreover, some successful RVIR are used to operate catheter or guidewire accurately. However, catheter and guidewire are operated respectively by intervening physician during surgery, because the support of catheter and the navigation of guidewire are necessary when guidewire passes through the vessel, especially the narrow vessel branch. Therefore, lacking of cooperation of catheter and guidewire is a great challenge for complete or complex surgery. In this paper, a cooperation of catheter and guidewire concept is firstly introduced in RVIR. The prototype operates catheter and guidewire respectively and accurately. The experimental results show that: the average error of the axial motion is 0.33mm, and the maximum error of the axial motion is 1.42mm. The RVIR, effectively realize the cooperation of catheter and guidewire, is feasible for minimally invasive surgery.