Engineering news
The team, from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, received a four-year, $3.7m National Institutes of Health grant to attempt what they say would be a medical first – performing robotic heart catheterisation while the patient is inside the magnetic resonance imaging machine.
A physician controlling the micro-robotic device would perform the procedure – known as a left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO), used for managing stroke risk in atrial fibrillation patients – wearing a mixed, or augmented-reality (AR), headset.
In the LAAO procedure, doctors insert a catheter, or flexible tube, through a vein or artery in the groin and thread it up to the heart to deliver an implant, which reduces blood clots in the heart.
Using current technology, the doctor views the heart tissue and manually positions the implant with the help of an X-ray of the heart, which provides only a very hazy picture.
“Using our technology, the physician would see clinical quality soft-tissue images in real time,” said lead researcher Professor M Cenk Cavusoglu, director of the Medical Robotics and Computer Integrated Surgery (Mercis) Lab at the Case school of engineering.
“He or she would be able to pinpoint the exact location, and the micro-robot would perform the procedure. This would make this procedure safer, easier, far more effective, and even less expensive as a treatment for atrial fibrillation.”
By demonstrating the benefits of AR-guided robotic surgery for this procedure, the researchers hope to increase its availability to atrial fibrillation patients, especially those with life expectancy of more than 20 years.
The two big pieces of the work – the robotic catheter operating inside an MRI, and the high-speed MRI imaging itself – provide significant challenges, Cavusoglu said. Combining them requires several experts from different disciplines.
Other members of the project include Mark Griswold, professor of radiology from the Case Western Reserve school of medicine, Nicole Seiberlich at the University of Michigan, Hiram Bezerra from the University of South Florida, Mauricio Arruda from University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Centre, and Joseph Piktel from MetroHealth.
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