A Unified Algorithm For Robotic-Assisted Cardiac Endovascular Surgery

The paper proposes an algorithm that unifies the sequence of actions during cardiac endovascular surgery. The algorithm clearly shows the typical operation required for different medical manipulations, helping to design more universal robots. In the future, this algorithm can be used to create endovascular robots that will completely replace humans in the operating room, leaving only the decision-making function to the surgeon. The analysis of the proposed algorithm showed that commercial endovascular robots are much less advanced and can perform no more than $50 \%$ of the actions performed by medical personnel. Moreover, in most cases, all these actions are performed manually with complete control of the surgeon. To understand how endovascular robotics can be more automated, all operations within the developed algorithm were divided into three classes, depending on the complexity and risks of their automation. The first class includes operations where the robot does not interact directly with the patient. Therefore, they can already be automated with minimal risk to the patient. The third class includes actions that are the most difficult to automate and carry the highest risks for the patient in case of incorrect execution. The paper also analyzes the actions performed by the surgeon when the operation does not go according to plan, helping to design the robot that will be able to minimize the consequences for the patient in case of mistakes that happen during cardiac endovascular surgery.