Fiber Bragg Grating-Based Force Sensing in Robot-Assisted Cardiac Interventions: A Review

The adoption of non-surgical procedures for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases has yielded several benefits such as lesser perioperative pain, shorter hospital stay, and faster recovery time while introducing radiation-specific, orthopedic, force-related health risks etc. during manual procedures. To address these challenges, robotic catheter systems were unveiled for better procedural outcomes while also offering a vast decline in orthopedic and radiation risks witnessed aforetime. However, distal force sensing and feedback acquisition were lacking in most of these systems. Currently, miniaturized force-sensing catheters for smart catheterization and acquisition of tool-tissue or tool-vessel contact force rely mostly on electrical or optical-based approaches with fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensing technique receiving an increased attention lately. Hence, this paper presents an extensive overview of FBG-based distal force sensors for both conventional and robot-assisted cardiac interventions with emphasis on its fundamental principles, progressive development, design methodology, significance, as well as current challenges. In addition, the safety and feasibility of existing robotic catheter systems was analyzed based on existing studies. An outlook on future improvement of robotic catheter systems and adoption of FBG-based distal force sensors for wider minimally invasive applications were presented.