Naresh V. Datla

Hygrothermal Properties of Highly Toughened Epoxy Adhesives

The absorption and desorption of water in two different rubber-toughened epoxy adhesives was measured gravimetrically over a relatively wide range of temperature and relative humidity (RH). The data were fitted to a new diffusion model in which Ficks law was assumed to act in two sequential stages, each with its own diffusion coefficient and saturated water concentration. This “sequential dual Fickian” (SDF) model and a Langmuir-type diffusion model were both able to model the absorption behaviour. The dependence of the five SDF model parameters on temperature and RH was investigated in detail. The two diffusion coefficients were found to be largely independent of RH, while the fractional mass uptake values for each stage increased with RH. The absorption temperature only had a significant effect on the diffusion coefficient of the first stage and the fractional mass uptake of the second stage. Water desorption from the two epoxies was modeled accurately using Ficks law. A significant difference was observed between the amounts of retained water in the two adhesives after drying. The results can be used to predict the water concentration distribution in adhesive joints exposed to environments of changing temperature and RH.

Polyacrylamide phantom for self-actuating needle-tissue interaction studies.

This study presents a polyacrylamide gel as a phantom material for needle insertion studies specifically developed for self-actuating needles to enhance the precise placement of needles in prostate. Bending of these self-actuating needles within tissue is achieved by Nitinol actuators attached to the needle body; however these actuators usually involve heating that can thermally damage the tissue surrounding the needles. Therefore, to develop and access feasibility of these needles, a polyacrylamide gel has been developed that mimics the thermal damage and mechanical properties of prostate tissue. Mechanical properties of the polyacrylamide gel was controlled by varying the concentrations of acrylamide monomer and N,N-methylene-bisacrylamide (BIS) cross-linker, and thermal sensitivity was achieved by adding bovine serum albumin (BSA) protein. Two polyacrylamide gels with different concentrations were developed to mimic the elastic modulus of the tissue. The two phantoms showed different rupture toughness and different deflection of bevel-tip needle. To study the thermal damage, a Nitinol wire was embedded in the phantom and resistively heated. The measured opaque zone (0.40mm) formed around the wire was close to the estimated damage zone (0.43mm) determined using the cumulative equivalent minutes at 43°C.

A model to predict deflection of bevel-tipped active needle advancing in soft tissue

Active needles are recently being developed to improve steerability and placement accuracy for various medical applications. These active needles can bend during insertion by actuators attached to their bodies. The bending of active needles enables them to be steered away from the critical organs on the way to target and accurately reach target locations previously unachievable with conventional rigid needles. These active needles combined with an asymmetric bevel-tip can further improve their steerability. To optimize the design and to develop accurate path planning and control algorithms, there is a need to develop a tissue-needle interaction model. This work presents an energy-based model that predicts needle deflection of active bevel-tipped needles when inserted into the tissue. This current model was based on an existing energy-based model for bevel-tipped needles, to which work of actuation was included in calculating the system energy. The developed model was validated with needle insertion experiments with a phantom material. The model predicts needle deflection reasonably for higher diameter needles (11.6% error), whereas largest error was observed for the smallest needle diameter (24.7% error).

Towards a Nitinol Actuator for an Active Surgical Needle

Surgical needles, for safe and accurate percutaneaous interventions, need to be navigated accurately through the tissue and placed precisely at the targets. A novel active needle, using Nitinol wires as actuators, has been proposed to navigate the needle within the tissue. In this design, when temperature of Nitinol wire was increased by Joule heating, the material undergoes a phase transformation that produces relatively large actuating forces and strains. Using both experimental and numerical simulations, the force-temperature response of the Nitinol wires were characterized. The results indicate that increasing the applied current decreases the response time to reach maximum force, but increases the maximum temperature reached. Therefore, the chosen applied current should be high enough to produce sufficient actuation force and shorter response time, but not too high such that the lower actuator temperatures are maintained to minimize tissue damage.Copyright

A flexible active needle for steering in soft tissues

Flexible needles that can be steered within soft tissues are a promising approach to reach target locations that are previously inaccessible and to improve the placement accuracy. Promising designs to increase flexibility include the bevel-tipped needles, kinked needles and the recently proposed flexure-based needles, where they attain a fixed curvature when inserted. We developed a flexible active needle, where needle curvature (or deflection) can be controlled by actuators attached to the needle body. Moreover, to further increase the flexibility a flexure element was used to join the needle tip to the rest of the needle body. A prototype of the flexure active needle was developed and demonstrated both in air and tissue-mimicking phantom.

Size Effect on the Critical Stress of Nitinol Wires

Nitinol has the best shape memory and superelasticity properties of all known polycrystalline shape memory alloys (SMAs) due to diffusionless Martensitic transformation. Due to these unique properties, Nitinol is increasingly used in different fields such as biomedical, structural and aerospace engineering. However, under certain stresses Nitinol exhibits unrecovered strain, or permanent set, that limits the applicability of Nitinol wire. This study showed that there exists a critical range of stress beyond which the permanent set is negligible. The goal of this paper is to determine range of critical stress using two different methods i.e. constant stress experiment and isothermal tensile test and to show variation of this range with changes in wire diameters.Copyright

Feasibility of Shape Memory Alloy Wire Actuation for an Active Steerable Cannula

Needle insertion is used in many diagnostic and therapeutic percutaneous medical procedures such as brachytherapy, thermal ablations, and breast biopsy. Insufficient accuracy using conventional surgical cannulas motivated researchers to provide actuation forces to the cannulas body for compensating the possible errors of surgeons/physicians. In this study, we present the feasibility of using shape memory alloy (SMA) wires as actuators for an active steerable surgical cannula. A three-dimensional (3D) finite element (FE) model of the active steerable cannula was developed to demonstrate the feasibility of using SMA wires as actuators to bend the surgical cannula. The material characteristics of SMAs were simulated by defining multilinear elastic isothermal stress–strain curves that were generated through a matlab code based on the Brinson model. Rigorous experiments with SMA wires were done to determine the material properties as well as to show the capability of the code to predict a stabilized SMA transformation behavior with sufficient accuracy. In the FE simulation, birth and death method was used to achieve the prestrain condition on SMA wire prior to actuation. This numerical simulation was validated with cannula deflection experiments with developed prototypes of the active cannula. Several design parameters affecting the cannulas deflection such as the cannulas Youngs modulus, the SMAs prestrain, and its offset from the neutral axis of the cannula were studied using the FE model. Real-time experiments with different prototypes showed that the quickest response and the maximum deflection were achieved by the cannula with two sections of actuation compared to a single section of actuation. The numerical and experimental studies showed that a highly maneuverable active cannulas can be achieved using the actuation of multiple SMA wires in series.

Dynamic estimation of an active surgical needle deflection for brachytherapy procedures

In this study, we present the dynamic response of a shape memory alloy (SMA) actuated steerable needle. The active needle can be used in many diagnostic and therapeutic percutaneous needle-based procedures. For instance brachytherapy, one the most popular prostate cancer treatments, could greatly benefit from the active needle for accurate placement of radioactive seed in target locations. In order to show the real-time deflection of the active needle under actuation of SMA wires both finite element analyses (FEA) and prototype experimentation methods were utilized. Prediction of the complex stress-strain response of SMAs due to their internal phase transformation was a challenging part of this study. Rigorous experiments were done to determine the SMAs material properties and to show a stabilized SMA transformation behavior with sufficient accuracy. A three-dimensional FE model of the active steerable needle was developed in ANSYS to demonstrate the feasibility of using SMA wires as actuators to bend the surgical needle. The birth and death method was used to achieve the pre-strain condition on SMA wire prior to actuation. This numerical simulation was validated with needle deflection experiments with developed prototypes of the active needle. Real-time experiments with different prototypes showed that the quickest response and the maximum deflection were achieved by the needle with multiple actuation sections.

Analysis Driven Design Optimization of SMA-Based Steerable Active Needle

The continuous implementation of shape memory alloys’ (SMAs’) actuation capabilities in various applications from aerospace to biomedical tools has attracted researchers’ interests into design optimization of active systems. Traditional methods of optimization have mostly relied on several iterations of altering and testing different possible design of prototypes seeking the best configuration. This trial and error experimentation method is usually expensive and time consuming. In the recent years the availability of computational analysis has facilitated the optimization process by avoiding the developments of many prototypes in the whole design space. In this work an automated design optimization frameworks is presented especially for the systems including active components. Design exploration of a recently proposed medical device was considered as a case study to elaborate this iterative technique. SMA activated needle is an innovative medical tool to be used in needle-based surgeries aiming the enhancement of the needle tip placement inside the tissue. Different configurations have been assessed by altering the design variables in the assigned domain seeking the maximum needle tip deflection to assure the maximum flexibility of the structure where all the analyses were constrained to the stress level of SMAs to be in the safe range preventing plasticity. A commercially available finite element package was used for the iterative assessments in the optimization approach. The challenging part in any analysis of active components is the incorporation of a suitable material model. For this purpose three experimental setups were developed to get the material properties of SMAs through different responses of the wires. These material properties along with the implementation of Brinson model led to the generation of the isothermal stress strain curves which were defined as material model of the active components in the FE analyses. The FE model was then linked to the iterative engine of direct optimization to iterate through the whole domain and determine the best configuration. The Design of Experiments (DOE) and the Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm (MOGA) were used for the case study optimization. Both the design optimization and the design sensitivity studies were described. The results showed the length of the needle and the offset between the neutral axis of needle and the actuator were the most sensitive variables. The best five configurations with the maximum tip deflection was also presented.

Studies With SMA Actuated Needle for Steering Within Tissue

Flexible needles that can be steered within soft tissues are a promising approach to precisely reach target locations, thereby can significantly benefit needle based surgical procedures such as brachytherapy and biopsy. Several design approaches have been suggested to increase needle flexibility that include bevel-tip needles, kinked needles and flexure-based needles. These needles when inserted into a soft materials takes a curved path. This curved path can be controlled while inserting by rotating the needle at its base. In this work another approach to control the curved path was explored. Here the needle body was attached with a shape memory alloy (SMA) actuator close the needle tip that when actuated bends the needle and thereby leads to a curved path inside soft tissue. A prototype of the SMA actuated needle was developed and the working principle was demonstrated in air, tissue-mimicking gel, and pig liver. Moreover, the effect of actuator wire diameter on the needle behavior were studied.Copyright