A Novel Haptic Interface for Enhancing Operational Transparency in Robot-Assisted Vascular Interventional Surgery

Vascular interventional robot enables surgeons to perform percutaneous coronary interventions remotely from the cardiac catheterization room, significantly reducing their radiation exposure. However, the teleoperation mode inherently causes the loss of force perception, increasing surgical risks and limiting the clinical application of vascular interventional robots. Furthermore, existing robot systems lack the ability to enhance surgeons’ force perception and operational transparency. To address these limitations, we developed an intuitive interface with enhanced haptic feedback for vascular interventional robot. Our approach involved three key innovations: Firstly, we designed a magnetism-based feedback mechanism based on the equivalent magnetic charge method to provide high-precision and real-time force feedback. Secondly, we proposed a feedback enhancement model based on surgeons’ experience to reduce damage to vulnerable vascular areas. Thirdly, a dynamic feedback compensation strategy was presented, aiming at addressing the issue of vascular wall rupture resulted from the rapid decay of feedback force during instantaneous guidewire penetration through lesions in surgical procedures. Finally, we conducted a series of experiments to assess the accuracy, dynamic tracking ability, and overall effectiveness of our system. The results demonstrate the developed haptic interface not only improves surgical transparency but also reduces the risk of vascular injury and puncture, thereby advancing the clinical applicability of vascular interventional robots.