Design of a Novel Flexible Endoscope-Cardioscope

Abstract

In this paper, we present a novel flexible endoscope which is well suited to minimally invasive cardiac surgery (MICS). It is named ‘the Cardioscope’. The Cardioscope is composed of a handle, a rigid shaft, a flexible section and the imaging system. The flexible section is composed of an elastic tube, a number of spacing discs, a constraint tube, and four tendons. Compared with other flexible endoscopes, the Cardioscope is much more dexterous. The maximum bending angle of the Cardioscope is 190°. Ex-vivo tests show that the cardioscope is well suited to (MICS), it provides the much larger scope of vision than rigid endoscopes and provides good manipulation inside the confined environment. In the test, the Cardioscope successfully explores the full heart through a single hole, which shows the design is promising. Despite it was designed for MICS, the Cardioscope can also be applied to other minimally invasive surgeries, such as laparoscopy, neurosurgery, transnasal and transoral surgery. Copyright © 2015 by ASME Country-Specific Mortality and Growth Failure in Infancy and Young Children and Association With Material Stature Use interactive graphics and maps to view and sort country-specific infant and early childhood mortality and growth failure data and their association with maternal

full text

Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.