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ICBME 2016 Special Symposium in surgical navigation and robotics

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ICBME 2016 Special Symposium on Surgical Robotics and Navigation Symposium

Organizing Chairs: Hongliang Ren (Singapore), Etsuko Kobayashi (Japan)

kobayashiRenHongliang-BME-NUS

Themes

  • Computer-Assisted Surgery
  • Flexible Robotics and navigation in Surgery
  • Artificial Intelligence in Robotic Surgery

Date: Dec 7, 2016 U-Town

Gallery

https://goo.gl/photos/vCNqYfWmD26UF41j7
   
   

Speakers and Topics

sakuma

Keynote speaker: SAKUMA, Ichiro, University of Tokyo

  • COMPUTER AIDED SURGERY FOR ASSISTING MINIMALLY INVASIVE THERAPIES
  • Abstract
    Minimally invasive therapy such as endoscopic surgery and catheter based intervention are being spread in many surgical intervention fields. Thus engineering assistance is important to realize safe and effective minimally invasive therapy. Computer Assisted Surgical guidance such as surgical navigation is one of key technologies. It is expected that application of robotic technology to minimally invasive surgery will provide the following functions:
    (1) Precise manipulation of biological tissues and surgical instruments in narrow and confined surgical field.
    (2) Precise and accurate localization of therapeutic devices using various pre and intra-operative medical information.In the first mode of application, more compact system is required. It can be realized by introduction of novel mechanical design and application off a new mechanism as well as new materials. At the same time integration with various energy devices are also required. Intra-operative guidance utilizing various pre and intra operative information is necessary in the second mode of application. Image guided robotic system for RF ablation, laser ablation, intensity modified radiation therapy, and high intensity focused ultrasound. In this type of robot, various preand intraoperative information including functional information is used to navigate the therapeutic devices to the target lesion. Intra-operative identification of pathological state of the target tissue and evaluation of outcome after therapeutic intervention are also important.Factors limiting the application of surgical navigation systems and medical robotics include limited usability requiring additional procedures for preparation, and high costs. Recent progress of computer vision technologies will solve part of these issues.For wider spread of these technologies in clinical environment, further improvement of usability, cost reduction, and accumulation of clinical evidences demonstrating efficacy from both clinical and economical point of view are required.
  • Biography
    Ichiro Sakuma received B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in precision machinery engineering from the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, in 1982, 1984, and 1989, respectively. He was Research Associate (1987), Associate Professor (1991) at the Department of Applied Electronic Engineering, Tokyo Denki University, Saitama, Japan. He was research instructor at Department of Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas from 1990 to 1991. He was Associate Professor at Department of Precision Engineering (1998), Associate Professor (1999) and Professor (2001), Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, the University of Tokyo. He is currently a Professor at Department of Bioengineering, Department of Precision Engineering, Director of Medical Device Development and Regulation Research Center, and Vice dean, School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo. He is the immediate past president of Japanese Society for Medical and Biological Engineering (JSMBE) (2014-2016). He is also Deputy Director for Medical Devices, Center for Product Evaluation, Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA)His research interests includes 1) Computer Aided Surgery, 2) Medical Robotics and medical devise for minimally invasive therapy, 3) Analysis of cardiac arrhythmia phenomena and control of arrhythmia, and 4) Regulatory sciences for medical device development.He received various academic awards including, The Japan Society of Computer Aided Surgery, Best Paper Award (2006), Robotic Society of Japan, Best Paper Award (2010, 2015). In 2014, his group’s research was selected in 2014 as one of the most exciting peer-reviewed optics research to have emerged over the past 12 months by Photonics and Optics News (OSA)

masamuneken

Ken Masamune, Tokyo Women’s Medical University

  • OPEN PLATFORM OF MEDICAL ROBOTS/ DEVICES WITH SMART CYBER OPERATING THEATER (SCOT): DESIGN CONCEPT AND PROTOTYPE ROBOT DEVELOPMENTS
  • Abstract
    Nowadays, several medical devices/systems including imaging machine, anesthesia, navigation system, biomonitoring devices, surgical bed, medical robots, et al., are installed in the operation room, however, it is unpleasant situation that all devices are performed in stand-alone mode, without time-synchronization, and it is difficult to combine/analyze some set of information from devices to make surgeon’s decision during surgery. To improve this situation, we’ve been developing an integrated operating room named “Smart Cyber Operating Theater (SCOT) with middleware ORiN system. In this presentation, we introduce a current SCOT project and the design concept of new open platform architecture for the integration of master/slave robotic devices and information guided robot especially for oral and maxillofacial surgery. This design will accelerate the development of any types of robotic interfaces/end effectors with fast validation.
  • Biography
    Ken Masamune received the Ph.D. degree in precision machinery engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1999. From 1995 to 1999, he was a Research Associate in the Department of Precision Machinery Engineering, the University of Tokyo. From 2000 to 2004, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biotechnology, Tokyo Denki University, Tokyo. Since 2005, he has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanoinformatics, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo. His current research interests include computer-aided surgery, especially medical robotics and visualization devices and systems for surgery.

jshongdgist

Jaesung Hong, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology

  • AUGMENTED REALITY FOR SURGICAL NAVIGATION
  • Abstract
    In these days, augmented reality (AR) has become a key technology for surgical navigation. Using the AR technology, the shape of invisible organs are overlapped to the visible endoscopic or microscopic images. Therefore the surgeon can avoid damaging the healthy tissue, and reduce the incision area. In the AR-based surgery, optical tracker and camera are generally used. Optical tracker can measure the position and pose of multiple markers, and the relationship between the camera and target organs of patient can be measured in real-time by tracking of the markers which are mounted on the camera body and the patient. In the AR display, finding the relationship between the optical marker mounted on the camera body and the center of camera (camera registration) is particulary important. This relationship strongly affects the overall accuracy of AR display. In this talk, the latest AR technologies applied for the surgical navigation are introduced.
  • Biography
    Jaesung Hong is an associate professor and the Department Chair of Robotics Engineering at the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), South Korea. His research area is medical imaging and medical robotics for minimally invasive surgery.
    At the University of Tokyo, he has developed the world first US-guided needle insertion robot tracking a movable and deformable organ. This was reported in Physics in Medicine and Biololgy in 2004, and has been frequently cited (> 160). While he worked at Kyushu University Hospital in Japan, he developed various customized surgical navigation systems, which were clinically applied in approximately 120 surgeries. These included percutaneous ablation therapies for liver tumors, cochlear implant surgeries, neurosurgeries for gliomas, and dental implant surgeries.
    After moving to DGIST which is a research-oriented special university supported by Korean government, he developed a single port surgery robot and its master device for high force transimisson and large workspace as well as a portable, AR-based surgical navigation system, which has been tested in tibia tumor resections and orthognathic surgeries in collaboration with major Korean hospitals, including the Seoul National University Hospital of Bundang, Samsung Seoul Hospital, etc. He is one of a small number of specialists who is familiar with both engineering and clinical medicine.
    Until 2016, Prof. Hong has published approximately 42 journal papers including 30 SCI/SCIE papers with impact factors. Six of them are top 10% ranked journal papers. He also submitted or registered 15 domestic and 7 international patents. He has received 9 best paper/presentation awards, in addition to obtaining 10 research funds amounting to approximately 4.5M USD (including planned budgets).

KwokKaWai

Ka-Wai Kwok, University of Hong Kong

  • MR-COMPATIBLE ROBOTIC SYSTEMS: TOWARDS THE INTRAOPERATIVE MRI-GUIDED INTERVENTIONS
  • Abstract
    Advanced surgical robotics has attracted significant research interest in supporting image guidance, even magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for effective navigation of surgical instruments. In situ effective guidance of access routes to the target anatomy, rendered based on imaging data, can enable a distinct awareness of the position of robotic instrument tip relative to the target anatomy in various types of minimally invasive interventions. Therefore, such MRI-guided robots will rely on real-time processing the co-registration of surgical plan with the imaging data captured during the intervention, as well as computing the relative configuration between the instrument and the anatomy of surgical interest.
    This talk will present a compact robotic system capable to operate inside the bore of MRI scanner, as well as its solutions to technical challenges of providing a safe, effective catheter-based surgical manipulation. The proposed image processing system demonstrates its clinical potential of enhanced surgical safety by imposing visual feedback on tele-operated robotic instruments even under large-scale and rapid tissue deformations in soft tissue surgeries, such as cardiac electrophysiology and stereotactic neurosurgery. The ultimate research objective is to enable the operator to perform safe, precise and effective control of robotics instruments with the aid of pre- and intra-operative MRI models. The present work will be timely to bridge the current technical gap between MRI and surgical robotic control.
  • Biography
    Dr. Ka-Wai Kwok is currently assistant professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, who completed his PhD training in The Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, Imperial College London in 2011, where he continued research on surgical robotics as a postdoctoral fellow. After then, Dr. Kwok obtained the Croucher Foundation Fellowship 2013-14, which supported his research jointly hosted by The University of Georgia, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital – Harvard Medical School. His research interests focus on surgical robotics, intra-operative medical image processing, and their uses of high-performance computing techniques. To date, he has been involved in various designs of surgical robotic devices and interfaces for endoscopy, laparoscopy, stereotactic and intra-cardiac catheter interventions. His work has also been recognized by several awards from IEEE international conferences, including ICRA’14, IROS’13 and FCCM’11. He also became the recipient of Early Career Awards 2015/16 offered by Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong.

RenHongliang-BME-NUS

Hongliang Ren, National University of Singapore, Singapore

  • TOWARDS MAGNETIC ACTUATED MICROROBOTIC NEEDLESS INJECTION
  • Abstract
    The feasibility of a needleless magnetic-actuated device for the purpose of intravitreal injections is investigated using three different design prototypes.
    A needleless device could potentially significantly reduce patient anxiety levels and occurrences of needle stick injuries to both healthcare workers and patients Moreover, a magnetic-actuated device allows for control of the current supplied over time to the device and the corresponding depth of penetration of the drug.
    Substitutes for the sclera and vitreous region were used in the experiments where a blue dye was injected using the two separate devices to identify if these devices were able to eject the liquid with enough force needed to penetrate the sclera and deliver the liquid to within the vitreous region and whether there was a relationship between the current supplied to the devices and the depth of delivery The solenoid prototype injector was not able to eject the liquid at a force required to penetrate the sclera although, because the vitreous region was a lot softer, a follow through current was predicted to be able to deliver the bulk of the liquid to the middle portion of the vitreous substitute used in this experiment. Moreover, the addition of a controller to the system was able to produce a two part force to the liquid, the initial peak force meant to penetrate the sclera and a follow through force to deliver the drug to the vitreous region only.
  • Biography
    Dr. Hongliang Ren is currently an assistant professor and leading a research group on medical mechatronics in the Biomedical Engineering Department of National University of Singapore (NUS). He is an affiliated Principal Investigator for the Singapore Institute of Neurotechnology (SINAPSE) and Advanced Robotics Center at National University of Singapore. Dr. Ren received his PhD in Electronic Engineering (Specialized in Biomedical Engineering) from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in 2008. After his graduation, he worked as a Research Fellow in the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics (LCSR) and the Engineering Center for Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology (ERC-CISST), Department of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Computer Science, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA, from 2008 to 2010. In 2010, he joined the Pediatric Cardiac Biorobotics Lab, Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Children’s Hospital Boston & Harvard Medical School, USA, for investigating the beating heart robotic surgery system. Prior to joining NUS, he also worked in 2012 on a collaborative computer integrated surgery project, at the Surgical Innovation Institute of Children’s National Medical Center, USA. His main areas of interest include Biomedical Mechatronics, Computer-Integrated Surgery, and Dynamic Positioning in Medicine.

Best Paper Finalist award at ICMA 2016 Conference

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Our team’s research paper titled “Investigation of a Stiffness Varying Mechanism for Flexible Robotic System” paper was presented and shortlisted for the Best Conference Paper at 2016 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation (ICMA 2016), Aug 7-10, 2016, China.

4T9A1380icma2016Award

ICIA 2016

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Members of our research staff were actively involved at ICIA2016, IEEE International Conference on Information and Automation in Ningbo, China from Jul 31 to Aug 4. Dr. Ren was the Program Chair of the organizing committee and also presented our recent papers in soft and flexible robotics.

icia2016keynote

bn3101AY16-17Sem1

  By ,

BN3101: Biomedical Engineering Design

Module Description :

Preparation of formal engineering reports on a series of engineering analysis and design problems illustrating methodology from various branches of applied mechanics as applied to bioengineering problems. Statistical analysis. A term project and oral presentation are required. Students are exposed to the entire design process: design problem definition, generation of a design specification, documentation, design review process, prototype fabrication, testing and calibration.

Note: Lecture to be conducted online. Students need to go through the lecture notes each week before attending tutorials.

Schedule & Tutorials

wk1: Background and clinical descriptions

Tutorial: Background introduction slides (HandExoskeletonIntro.pdf)
A pre-recorded video tutorial for the project introduction:

Selected videos (a playlist of video series):

 

In-house soft robotic hand

Reference in-house manipulators

wk2: Intellectual Property

Tutorial Agenda:

– Literature review slides – wk2-IP-Literature Review Of Biomimetic Wire-Driven Mechanisms for Swimming/Flying/Medicine (.pdf)

– Present the rough idea of your design concepts

– Do patent search, present &

Follow up actions:

  1. Search for 10 most relevant patents for your projects
  2. Generate keywords using these patents pertaining to your projects
  3. Generate a list of User specifications for your device using this list of 10 related patents. Hint: look for the various features of patented devices, and appreciate the intention of these features
  4. Create a table to compare the 10 patented devices’ features
  5. discuss/present the 3 (1 patent for every 2 members) most related ones for each group

References:

– You may search patents from www.google.com/patents or www.uspto.gov

– Patents filed by other groups (deflectable catheter US2013296781A1) | (arthroscope US2007179340A1 )

– Provisional patents filed to ILO by my research group FYI: (soft endoscopic robot) | (cable-driven flexible manipulator)

– How to tell if a patent has expired? It turns out not obvious and please refer to the following readings: Brown & Michaels – “How To Determine Patent Term” USPTO:Patent Term Calculator (Beta Version) Has a patent expired? – Part I

FYI only: Flipped class lectures:
– Week 2 breeze video lecture about IP study: https://breeze.nus.edu.sg/ip1

wk3: Design Methodology and Design Analysis

Tutorial Agenda (with tutors):
Follow the Design Methodology Slides and briefly identify:
– Role of each team member
– Procedure
– Project Plan Schedule
– Rough Needs‐Metrics Matrix

FYI only: Deprecated Flipped class lectures:
– Design Methodology Slides by Prof Leo & Prof Chan: Design Methodology in Bioengineering
– Associated breeze video lecture (also accessible through IVLE): https://breeze.nus.edu.sg/p4ktu5izooe/

wk4: Risk Analysis, Design Rationale and Verification

Tutorial Agenda:
– Follow up with week-2 action items and progress update
– Follow the above slides in Design Rationale, Design Verification, and Risk Analysis, briefly/roughly identify:
– How to address “Anatomical Variations” issue
– How to address “User Needs, Product Scope, and Design Acceptance Criteria”
– Failure Mode, Cause of Failure, and Harms associated with your products

FYI only: Deprecated Flipped class lectures:
–Risk Analysis Table[.docx]
–Design Rationale and Design Verification 2014[.pdf]   breeze lecture (https://breeze.nus.edu.sg/p6obwzld267/)
–Risk Management [.pdf]

wk5: Recap IP, Design Justifications, ASTM Assignments

Reference: 
– F1218 – 89(2014) : Standard Specification for Bronchoscopes (Rigid)
– F2726 – 08: Standard specification for fixation devices for tracheal tubes and other airway devices
– ASTM F1992 – 99(2007) Standard Practice for Reprocessing of Reusable, Heat Stable Endoscopic Accessory Instruments (EAI) Used with Flexible Endoscopes
–ASTM F1518 – 00 Standard Practice for Cleaning and Disinfection of Flexible Fiberoptic and Video Endoscopes Used in the Examination of the Hollow Viscera (Withdrawn 2009)
– Rebuttal documents by my research group FYI: (cable-driven flexible manipulator )

wk6: ASTM presentation

Tutorial

Reference News: the hand grasp testing will have international standard – check out here, which will be excellent references for you to set up your experiments after you have the prototype : http://www.nist.gov/el/isd/grasp.cfm

wk7: Mid-term Review

Dr. Ren: Presentation by Groups
– Presentation: 20 minutes for each group (15 presentation +5 QA)
– An extended/refined/polished/justified wrap-ups for the work done in the past 6 weeks, including introduction/background/clinical needs/markets/significance/SOA/gaps-to-fill; IP, design methodology/design analysis/rationale/verification; risk analysis; regulatory; prototyping;envisioned procedures/system etc.

wk8: Sterility Requirements & GLP

– Reference: Highly Biomimetic Design of a Muscle Glove (pdf from a RAL/ICRA 2016 submission 16-0311_01_ms)

wk9: Bioethics, Quiz, & Individual Project Update

Flipped online class: Bioethics (Bioethics and Medical Device.pdf)

Quiz:  1) 50 MCQs; 2) Duration is 1 hour, from 11am; 3) Quiz comprises of MCQs questions from weekly online assessments, and some new MCQs; 4) Closed-Book quiz

Tutorial:  Motorization (slides: MotorControl-Tutorial.pdf) & modeling (slides: tendon-driven-manipulator-kinematics.pdf).

wk10: Final Dry Run with Project Supervisors

wk11: Free Day for Team to Fix any problem with prototype

 

wk12: Final Oral Presentation of Project

wk13: Submit prototype, reports and final project documents to project supervisor by 5 pm

Please submit soft copy of your report & project data and actual prototype to your respective supervisor. That is:

  • Physically: submit project prototype (including tools borrowed, make also sure the prototype is functional at the time of your submission.) to Dr. Ren
  • Electronically: (dropbox/google-drive or whatever ways preferred) submit to Dr. Ren your group-project development documents including:
    • – reports in .docx format
    • – project presentation files (ASTM and final) in .pptx or equivalents (please make sure the video(s) is playable in another PC if applicable);
    • – CAD design files (in solidworks or equivalents)
    • – if applicable, source codes and a readme file on how to run the code
    • – other key project data (e.g., verification experiment data collected in .xlxs), references including ASTM standards, patents cited, and reference papers, etc.

Further possibilities

Possibility of investing your project and extend it to competitions (Completely voluntary and please discuss with Dr. Ren if for possible further extensions/supports/funding):

  • A manuscript to IJRA or MBEC
  • Samsung Solve For Tomorrow Competition http://www.samsung.com/sg/solvefortomorrow/
  • The Design of Medical Devices Conference call for 2-page technical brief (by Nov. 9, pretty easy to get accepted and it can be just a summary of your group project). You only need to follow “the required Technical Brief Template (Word)” (2-page) and get my comments before submission. The benefit is that “All accepted papers will be published as a two-page Technical Brief in the June and September issues of ASME Journal of Medical Devices” after giving the conference presentations and this would be a pretty good record in your CV when you are looking for jobs.

Open source robotic hand projects

 

More information

Motion Planning of Flexible Manipulators by Learning from Human Expert Demonstrations

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Abstract

Motion Planning of Multiple-segment flexible soft, and continuum Flexible Manipulators by Learning from Human Expert Demonstrations

Multiple-segment flexible and soft robotic actuators exhibit compliance but suffer from the difficulty of path planning due to their redundant degrees of freedom, although they are promising in complex tasks such as crossing body cavities to grasp objects. We propose a learning from demonstration method to plan the motion paths of flexible manipulators, by statistics machine-learning algorithms. To encode demonstrated trajectories and estimate suitable paths for the manipulators to reproduce the task, models are built based on Gaussian Mixture Model and Gaussian Mixture Regression respectively. The forward and inverse kinematic models of soft robotic arm are derived for the motion control. A flexible and soft robotic manipulator verifies the learned paths by successfully completing a representative task of navigating through a narrow keyhole.


 

Demo video at:

 

Publications

  • H. Wang; J. Chen; H. Y. Lau & H. Ren Motion Planning of IPMC Flexible Manipulators by Learning from Human Expert Demonstrations ICRA2016, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2016
  • J. Chen; H. REN & A. Lau Learning Reaching Movement Primitives from Human Demonstrations with Gaussian Mixture Regression and Stabilized Dynamical Systems International Conference on Control Science and Systems Engineering ICCSSE 2016, 2016
  • J. Chen; W. Xu; A. Lau & H. REN Towards Transferring Skills to Flexible Surgical Robots with Programming by Demonstration and Reinforcement Learning The Eighth International Conference on Advanced Computational Intelligence (ICACI2016), 2016
  • J. Chen; W. Xu; H. Ren & H. Y. Lau Automate Adaptive Robot Reaching Movement Based on Learning from Human Demonstrations with Dynamical Systems ROBIO2016, 2016

Best Student Paper for IEEE RCAR2016

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Our paper titled “Towards Magnetically Actuated Guide-wire Steering in Arteriovenous Fistula Angioplasty Procedures” was awarded for the Best Student Paper at IEEE Conference on Real-time Computing and Robotics (RCAR), June 6 to 10, 2016, at Angkor Wat, Cambodia.
RCAR-2

RCAR-IMG_5758

Ultrasound Assisted Guidance with Force Cues for Intravascular Interventions

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Project Goals


Image guidance during minimally invasive cardiovascular interventions is primarily achieved based on X-ray fluoroscopy, which has several limitations including limited 3D imaging, significant doses of radiation to operators, and lack of contact force measurement between the cardiovascular anatomy and interventional tools. Ultrasound imaging may complement or possibly replace 2D fluoroscopy for intravascular interventions due to its portability, safety, and the ability of providing depth information. However, it is a challenging work to perfectly visualize catheters and guidewires in the ultrasound images. In this paper, we developed a novel method to locate the position and orientation of the catheter tip in 2D ultrasound images in real time by detecting and tracking a passive marker attached to the catheter tip. Moreover, the contact force can also be measured due to the length variation of the marker in real time. An active geometrical structure model based method was proposed to detect the initial position of the marker, and a KLT (Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi) based algorithm was developed to track the position, orientation, and the length of the marker. The ex vivo experimental results indicate that the proposed method is able to automatically locate the catheter tip in the ultrasound images and sense the contact force, so as to facilitate the operators’ work during intravascular interventions.

Approaches/Results/Video

People Involved

Research Fellow: Jin Guo
Project Investigator: Hongliang Ren

Related Publications

TBA

Gold award in BES10SM Design Competition

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Congratulations to the Gold award in the Biomedical engineering Society 10th Scientific Meeting (BES10SM) at Singapore, 14th May 2016, for our lab’s research led by FYP student, Yoew Bok Seng, on the project of Magnetic Robotic Intervention, for the design (undergraduate) category.

Best Paper Finalist award at CSCWD 2016 Conference

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Our team’s research paper titled “Human-Compliant Body-Attached Soft Robots Towards Automatic Cooperative Ultrasound Imaging” paper was presented and shortlisted for the Best Conference Paper at 2016 20th IEEE International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design (CSCWD 2016), May 4-6, 2016, Nanchang, China.

Magnetically Actuated Guide-wire Steering

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Project Goals


Guide wires are commonly used to assist surgeons during vascular surgery. Guide wires are usually the first to be placed, eventually allowing easy exchange of surgical tools to the target site. The surgeon has to manually control and manipulate the guide wire to the target region. This process is complicated by the tortuous nature of the vasculature and is made worse as the surgeon has limited vision (constant need to switch between overlay angiographs) and control over the guide wire tip (controlling the distal tip from the proximal end). For the first time towards minimally invasive Arteriovenous Fistula Angioplasty Procedures, we aim to improve the controllability of the in vivo guide wire via the attachment of a magnetic tip to the distal end of the guide wire, which under the control of external magnetic field generators can deflect the magnetic tip. This controlled deflection translates to the selection of entrance angle for the guide wire tip, affording distal control.
This is especially useful for navigating around stenosis which is common for patients with Arteriovenous(AV) Fistula. The repeated use of the fistula during dialysis has been claimed as a cause for the high occurrence of stenosis (due to tissue scaring from access). Fistulas and their grafts are however still preferred over other renal access in most situation due to its lower risk of infections. Our proposed system here can improve the controllability, safety and speed of current procedures and can enable AV-Fistula Angioplasty Procedures to be shifted to out-patient clinics.

Approaches/Results/Videos

People Involved

Student: Bok Seng Yeow
Research fellow: Jinji Sun
Project Investigators: Hongliang Ren, Jackie Ho

Related Publications

Yeow, B. S.; Sun, J.; Ho, J. & Ren, H. Towards Magnetically Actuated Guide-wire Steering in Arteriovenous Fistula Angioplasty Procedures IEEE Conference on Real-time Computing and Robotics (RCAR), IEEE, 2016, best student paper.