Towards a Novel Soft Magnetic Laparoscope for Single Incision Laparoscopic Surgery

In single-incision laparoscopic surgery (SILS), magnetic anchoring and guidance system (MAGS) is a promising technique to prevent clutter in the surgical workspace and provide a larger vision field. Existing camera designs mainly rely on rigid structure design, resulting in risks of losing magnetic coupling and impacting tissue during the insertion and coupling procedure. In this paper, we proposed a wireless MAGS consisting of soft material and structure design. The camera can bend at the exit of the trocar and maintain strong coupling with the external actuator. The operation principle and modeling were established to investigate the parameter design. An easier insertion procedure was introduced and demonstrated in the experiment. The bendability was tested showing the camera could reach 20° in bending angle and 16.4mm in displacement. The insertion and deployment took less than 2 minutes on average.