Development of Pneumatically Driven Surgical Robot for Catheter Ablation

In this paper, we proposed a prototype of an assistant robot for catheter ablation surgery which is one of tachyarrhythmia therapy. The proposed robot grips and operates a balloon catheter using pneumatic force. The proposed robot is possible to sense small contact force returned to the catheter by measuring pneumatic pressure and display haptic information to the user. By getting haptic information in addition to visual information from X-ray fluoroscope, surgical accuracy will be improved. From the safety point of view, we proposed an anomaly detection method of the balloon motion based on template matching. We designed and manufactured the prototype of the proposed robot which has a catheter gripping mechanism and a pushing mechanism. In addition, we carried out an animal experiment and confirmed that the proposed robot can achieve a pulmonary vein blocking task, which is an important task in catheter ablation surgery. Furthermore, we conducted an experimental validation of the anomaly detection using a removed pig heart and confirmed that the proposed detection method will be effective.