An enhanced dual-finger robotic Hand for Catheter manipulating in vascular intervention: A preliminary study

Cardiovascular disease is a class of diseases that involve the heart and blood vessels, which is the leading cause of deaths globally. Vascular interventional surgery is an effective treatment. As belongs to minimally invasive surgery (MIS), it is more popular due to the advantages of smaller injury, faster recovery and higher accuracy rate. However, it needs up to 10 years to train a skilled surgeon for minimally invasive cardiovascular surgeries. The surgeon cannot avoid receiving the excessive dose of X-ray due to long time operation in daily work. A dual-finger robotic hand (DRH) was introduced to assist the surgeon in manipulating the catheter/guide wire. As a surgical device, DRH is aiming at simple mechanism, ease to use and convenient sterilization. It was carefully investigated how the surgeon manipulates the catheter/guide wire. The bionic thumb and forefinger were designed to imitate human's. Compared to human's, the two bionic fingers are enhanced due to that they can advance the catheter/guide wire without moving the whole hand. The DRH mechanism was carefully designed. A console was also designed for the surgeon to manipulate DRH. After the DRH control was done, the minimum robotic cardiovascular interventional system was formed. Experimental results have validated the feasibility of DRH and the robotic system. Future work regarding DRH is also discussed.