Surgeons have used catheters since at least 1752, when Ben Jonson used one to remove bladder stones from his brother. Flexible, disposable catheters arrived in the 1940’s. Nowadays magnetic fields guide them through the labyrinth of the human body as they make CCTV videos and take blood and tissue samples. Medical pioneers have longed for an autonomous robotic catheter so they could focus on more critical procedures.
Baby Steps towards an Autonomous Robotic Catheter
Ben Johnson’s catheter used ‘metal with segments hinged together with a wire enclosed to provide rigidity during insertion’. Patients were no doubt grateful when soft flexible ones arrived in the early 1900’s. Nowadays a patient may only feel a slight pressure if anything at all.
Prior to the arrival of the autonomous robotic catheter, surgeons have steered catheters using an external magnetic field they control via a computer. “As a result, the catheter can be steered through more complex blood vessels better than a conventional catheter.” So says Brad Nelson, professor of robotics and intelligent Systems at ETH Zurich.
Watch the world’s smallest robotic catheter on video
DuPont Scientists ‘Raise the Catheter Playing Field’
Doctors at Harvard-affiliated Boston Children’s Hospital made a breakthrough with an autonomous robotic catheter in May 2019. They used it to repair a leaky artificial valve in a pig’s heart. They watched on their monitors as the optical touch sensor with LED spotlight and endoscopic camera felt its way through the body.
The sensor told the catheter whether it was touching blood, the heart wall or a valve, or how hard it was pressing to avoid causing damage. Then the surgeon took over and completed the procedure after its artificially-intelligent control system autonomously steered it to its destination. “This would not only level the playing field.It would raise it,” says chief of pediatric cardiac bio-engineering, Dr Pierre Dupont.
“Every clinician in the world would be operating at a level of skill and experience equivalent to the best in their field. This has always been the promise of medical robots. Autonomy may be what gets us there.”
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