Intelligent Magnetic Control and Surgical Planning of a Multi-Segment Robotic Catheter for Endovascular Intervention

This paper presents the intelligent magnetic control of a multi-segment robotic catheter (MSRC), which is remotely actuated by an external mobile magnet system (EMMS). The design of the magnetic multi-segment robotic catheter is realized by the integration of each concentric tube with a variable outer diameter and opposite polarization tip magnets. The magnetic wrench is derived based on the polar coordinate positional relationship. An intelligent control scheme for the interaction between EMMS and MSRC is conducted based on the dynamic modeling of the EMMS. Moreover, we propose a navigation strategy for the target application scenario of multi-branch vascular intervention. Surgical planning in the coronary artery is analyzed in four different steering scenarios. The effectiveness of the proposed robotic catheter with corresponding control has been verified by an ex-vivo steering experiment within a human-sized arterial phantom. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed magnetically intelligent controller and the surgical planning strategy could improve surgical performance with better accuracy.