Towards robot-assisted anchor deployment in beating-heart mitral valve surgery

BackgroundBeating-heart intracardiac surgery promises significant benefits for patients compared with cardiopulmonary bypass based procedures. However, the fast motions of the heart introduce serious challenges for surgeons. MethodsIn this work, a new impedance-controlled master-slave telerobotic system is developed to help perform anchor deployment for mitral valve annuloplasty under the guidance of live ultrasound images of the heart. The proposed bilateral teleoperation system can both reflect the non-oscillatory portion of slave-heart tissue interaction force on the surgeon's hand as haptic feedback and implement rapid compensation for the beating heart's motion. The surgical task involves performing anchor deployment on a simulated moving heart tissue to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy for safely interacting with a moving organ. Results and ConclusionsThe results obtained show that the telerobotic system increases the success rate of anchor deployment by 100% and reduces the excess force application rate by 70% compared with manual attempts.