Development of a Minimally Invasive Ventricular Assistive Device

Ventricular assistive Devices (VaD) are a class of electromechanical devices that are used to support patients with delicate hearts. Traditional assistive devices are highly invasive in nature leading to problems of internal bleeding, blood clotting and infection in other parts of the body, which is difficult to diagnose early. In this paper, a novel Ventricular assistive device (VaD) as a minimally invasive technique, free from the aforementioned problems is proposed. The VaD consists of a balloon, wrapped around the weakened portions of the heart that inflates and deflates in accordance to the ECG signal to promote the blood flow. The ECG signal was acquired in-house from a passive subject to model the pumping mechanism of the device. The developed device was tested on a 3D heart model and the applied pressure was monitored along the pre-captured ECG signal. The proposed device is suggested to be a better substitute to the existing operational devices.