Xianqiang Bao

Design and evaluation of a novel guidewire navigation robot

Robotically controlled steerable guidewire navigation systems has been paid much attention to, because it can allow the surgeons to be released from radiation and heavy radiation protection garments, reduce radiation exposure, increase precision and stability of motion, and add operator comfort. The aim of the study was to improve the precision of axial motion, rotational motion and force measurement, as well as installation convenience. A novel guidewire navigation robot, composed of a master side and a slave side was developed, which can reach the high precision, measure the force/torque of guidewire, and realize the force/torque feedback to the surgeon. To evaluate feasibility of the novel guidewire navigation robot, a system evaluation was developed. The experimental results show that: axial error was no more than 0.5mm, the rotational error was no more than 1 degree, and force error was no more than 0.031N. The novel guidewire navigation robot, potentially increasing guidewire motion precision and accuracy, is feasible for minimally invasive surgery.

A cooperation of catheters and guidewires-based novel remote-controlled vascular interventional robot

Remote-controlled vascular interventional robots (RVIRs) are being developed to increase the overall accuracy of surgical operations and reduce the occupational risks of intervening physicians, such as radiation exposure and chronic neck/back pain. Several RVIRs have been used to operate catheters or guidewires accurately. However, a lack of cooperation between the catheters and guidewires results in the surgeon being unable to complete complex surgery by propelling the catheter/guidewire to the target position. Furthermore, it is a significant challenge to operate the catheter/guidewire accurately and detect their proximal force without damaging their surfaces. In this study, we introduce a novel method that allows catheters and guidewires to be operated simultaneously in complex surgery. Our method accurately captures force measurements and enables precisely controlled catheter and guidewire operation. A prototype is validated through various experiments. The results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed RVIR to operate a catheter and guidewire accurately, detect the resistance forces, and complete complex surgical operations in a cooperative manner.

Operation evaluation in-human of a novel remote-controlled vascular interventional robot

Remote-controlled vascular interventional robots (RVIRs) are being developed to increase the accuracy of surgical operations and reduce the number of occupational risks sustained by intervening physicians, such as radiation exposure and chronic neck/back pain. However, complex control of the RVIRs improves the doctor’s operation difficulty and reduces the operation efficiency. Furthermore, incomplete sterilization of the RVIRs will increase the risk of infection, or even cause medical accidents. In this study, we introduced a novel method that provides higher operation efficiency than a previous prototype and allows for complete robot sterilization. A prototype was fabricated and validated through laboratory setting experiments and an in-human experiment. The results illustrated that the proposed RVIR has better performance compared with the previous prototype, and preliminarily demonstrated that the proposed RVIR has good safety and reliability and can be used in clinical surgeries.

Toward cooperation of catheter and guidewire for remote-controlled vascular interventional robot

Remote-controlled vascular interventional surgery robots (RVIR) are being developed to reduce the occupational risk of the intervening physician, such as radiation, chronic neck and back pain, and increase accuracy and stability of surgery operation. Moreover, some successful RVIR are used to operate catheter or guidewire accurately. However, catheter and guidewire are operated respectively by intervening physician during surgery, because the support of catheter and the navigation of guidewire are necessary when guidewire passes through the vessel, especially the narrow vessel branch. Therefore, lacking of cooperation of catheter and guidewire is a great challenge for complete or complex surgery. In this paper, a cooperation of catheter and guidewire concept is firstly introduced in RVIR. The prototype operates catheter and guidewire respectively and accurately. The experimental results show that: the average error of the axial motion is 0.33mm, and the maximum error of the axial motion is 1.42mm. The RVIR, effectively realize the cooperation of catheter and guidewire, is feasible for minimally invasive surgery.

Leader-follower cooperative movement method for multiple amphibious spherical robots

Information exchanges and cooperative movements of multiple robots have become a hot topic in robotics. To increase the adaptability of robots in amphibious scenarios, an improved amphibious spherical robot was designed in this paper. However, the ability of single robot was limited. To further increase the sensing range and work efficiency of own amphibious spherical robots, a Leader-follower method, which could realize the coordinated movement and formation keeping for three or more robots, was adopted in this paper. The theoretical analysis show that the Leader-follower method could be easily applied in amphibious spherical robots for practical applications. And a simulation experiment platform named Player/Stage was used for verifying the effectiveness of this method. The construction of the experimental environment and the final simulation results were provided in this paper. Through the analysis of experimental results, the feasibility of the Leader-follower method was verified, and this method will be used to implement multiple amphibious spherical robots cooperative motion in future works.

Compensatory force measurement and multimodal force feedback for remote-controlled vascular interventional robot

Minimally invasive vascular interventional surgery is widely used and remote-controlled vascular interventional surgery robots (RVIRs) are being developed to reduce the occupational risk of the intervening physician in minimally invasive vascular interventional surgeries. Skilled surgeon performs surgeries mainly depending on the detection of collisions. Inaccurate force feedback will be difficult for surgeons to perform surgeries or even results in medical accidents. In addition, the surgeon cannot quickly and easily distinguish whether the proximal force exceeds the safety threshold of blood vessels or not, and thus it results in damage to the blood vessels. In this paper, we present a novel method comprising compensatory force measurement and multimodal force feedback (MFF). Calibration experiments and performance evaluation experiments were carried out. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method can measure the proximal force of catheter/guidewire accurately and assist surgeons to distinguish the change of proximal force more easily. This novel method is suitable for use in actual surgical operations.

Effects of the transverse micro-vibration on guide wires for endovascular therapy

The vascular minimally invasive intervention is a new type of medical technology with medical catheter and guide wire as the main surgical equipment which is for remote minimally invasive treatment of vascular disease. It is widely used for its advantages, such as smaller trauma, shorter recovery and less pain. But there are many deficiencies limiting the continued development of vascular intervention surgery: Serious damage of X-ray to the doctor during the surgery; high dependence on the doctors experience and technique; low surgical efficiency and safety. Through the study and analysis of the interventional operation, the doctors will usually be subjected to the resistance when operating the catheter and the guide wire during the surgery. In some special condition, the suffered resistance would be larger. The improper operation will cause blood vessel damage. In the course of the actual operation, the catheter and the guide wire in the human blood vessels will suffer the viscous resistance from the blood. It affects the operation and efficiency of the doctors, as well as the safety of surgery. At the same time, the research about the viscous resistance of the catheters and the guide wire during the surgery in the field is still in a blank, and there is no research method that can reduce this resistance. In order to solve these problems, this paper has carried on the research on the mechanism of the viscous force of the catheter and the guide wire in surgery, and pioneers a method to supplement the micro-vibration in the proximal end of the guide wire. This method can reduce the viscous force of the catheter and the guide wire exerted by the blood during the push process, improve the surgical safety and the smoothness of the operation.

Cable-driven interventional operation robot with Stribeck friction feedforward compensation

The interventional surgery is a type of minimally invasive operation which can reduce hospitalization time and greatly decrease patient morbidity compared to traditional methods. In previous work, the interventional operation robot was developed to send catheter or guidewire. The master side was a Phantom device and the PID control was used through upper machine. To further improve the precision and synchronization performance, a cable-driven slave side of interventional operation robot was developed. Friction model was built and friction feedforward algorithm was added to closed-loop control of the robot in this paper. Compared to the traditional motion control algorithm, the new method had advantages on dynamic performance.

A novel sensing system of catheter/guidewire operation for vascular interventional surgery

Recently, robotics and computing technology plays an increasing important role in the evolution of modern vascular interventional surgery (VIS). During operation procedure, thrust force and torque that surgeon applied to catheter is one of the most significant information for statistical analysis of surgery procedure and robotic assisting surgery system. Online precision detection of catheter thrust force and torque with minimized interference to surgeon is a critical issue. A novel sensing device is proposed to detect catheter operation force during surgery operation. Based on strain gauge principle and elegant structure design of elastic component, the proposed sensing device achieves trust force detection and torque detection simultaneously with a compact structure. The experimental equipment is developed for calibration and evaluation of the proposed sensing device. It can be seen from experimental results that the maximum torque and force detecting error of designed force/torque sensing device are 3.2 mN·m and 1.237N respectively. The maximum relative torque and force detecting error are 15.238% and 14.56%. The average error of torque and force detecting are 0.455mN·m and 0.0278N. The average relation error of torque and force detection are 2.13% and 0.327% respectively. The root-mean-square error of torque and force detection are 0.164mN.m and 0.267N. It indicates that the proposed catheter operation force detection device is rational.

A study on telecommunication technology and remote-control algorithm in minimally invasive surgical robotic system

Minimally invasive surgery is commonly applied in cardiovascular diseases at present while surgeons exposed in the X-ray. With the development of automation and mechanism in robotic system, robot-assisted surgery had been introduced to solve such trouble. And minimally invasive surgical robotic technology has developed rapidly. In this paper, we propose a remote-control algorithm based on a fuzzy adaptive PID control algorithm in MIS robotic system to realize the demand for remedy in remote districts. Meanwhile, such hybrid algorithm is proposed to reduce the environmental interference and remove the effect of time-delay in signal transmission of remote operations. The results of simulation and experiments validate that such algorithm actually suppresses the interference of low frequency and improves the tracking performance of the master-slave system.