A Teleoperated Robotic Catheter System with Motion and Force Feedback for Vascular Surgery

In recent time, robotic catheter systems have been proposed to minimize major limitations in minimally invasive vascular surgery. Technical evaluations of conventional systems have shown that teleoperation of robot-based systems could provide feasible and safe treatment method for vascular abnormalities. However, despite the merits, robot-assisted vascular surgeries are performed in fewer clinical centres, worldwide. In this study, a 2-DoF teleoperated robotic catheter system is proposed for treatment of vascular catheterization. The system provides visual feedbacks of motion and force information during catheterization procedures. Operation of the robotic catheter system was experimentally validated using master-slave teleoperation system. In the experiments, different phantom models of human vasculature were catheterized and the results obtained shows that the proposed robotic catheter system can provide useful motion and force feedback for vascular surgery.