Technical Validation of Multi-Section Robotic Bronchoscope With First Person View Control for Transbronchial Biopsies of Peripheral Lung

This study aims to validate the advantage of new engineering method to maneuver multi-section robotic bronchoscope with first person view control in transbronchial biopsy. Six physician operators were recruited and tasked to operate a manual and a robotic bronchoscope to the peripheral area placed in patient-derived lung phantoms. The metrics collected were the furthest generation count of the airway the bronchoscope reached, force incurred to the phantoms, and NASA-Task Load Index. The furthest generation count of the airway the physicians reached using the manual and the robotic bronchoscopes were
$6.6 \pm 1.2^{th}$
and
$6.7 \pm 0.8^{th}$
. Robotic bronchoscopes successfully reached the 5th generation count into the peripheral area of the airway, while the manual bronchoscope typically failed earlier in the 3 rd generation. More force was incurred to the airway when the manual bronchoscope was used (
$0.24 \pm 0.20$
[N]) than the robotic bronchoscope was applied (
$0.18 \pm 0.22$
[N],
$p< 0.05$
). The manual bronchoscope imposed more physical demand than the robotic bronchoscope by NASA-TLX score (
$55 \pm 24$
vs
$19 \pm 16$
,
$p< 0.05$
). These results indicate that a robotic bronchoscope facilitates the advancement of the bronchoscope to the peripheral area with less physical demand to physician operators. The metrics collected in this study would expect to be used as a benchmark for the future development of robotic bronchoscopes.