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Heart surgery could be helped by a catheter robotLEADBSIP SA/Alamy
By Yvaine YeA robotic surgical device has learned to autonomously navigate inside a beating heart. Using only a small camera for vision, it successfully travelled to the correct location in the hearts of pigs for surgeons to then complete the operation.
Pierre Dupont at Harvard Medical School in Boston and his colleagues created a robotic catheter —a thin tube widely used in surgeries to deliver devices or drugs. The device has a camera and LED light on its tip and is connected to a motor system that controls its movement from the other end.
The team used 2000 images of the interior of a heart to train an algorithm to control the movement of the catheter. They then tested the device in five pigs with leaky heart implants needing to be sealed.
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At the start of each procedure a doctor cut an incision in the bottom of the heart. The catheter was then inserted and tasked with autonomously navigating to the location of the leak, which it was given relative to other parts of the heart.
The tip of the robotFagogenis et al., Sci. Robot. 4, eaaw1977 (2019)
In each operation, the team tested the navigational skills of the catheter multiple times, and each pig had around three leaks that needed fixing. Out of 83 trials, the catheter successfully navigated to the right location 95 per cent of the time. A surgeon then took over to fix the leak.
It’s success rate is comparable to an experienced clinician, says Dupont. By taking over the mundane task of reaching the leaks, the robotic catheter lowers the mental burden of doctors so they can focus on plugging the holes, he says.
Currently, to fix a leaky valve implant, doctors use visual clues given by ultrasound and what they feel with their hands to navigate a catheter. “This requires significant skill and experience, and technology makes it easier,” says Manesh Patel at Duke University in North Carolina.
He hopes the autonomous catheter can be improved so it can enter the heart through blood vessels rather than a direct incision. Reaching the heart through vessels avoids unnecessary damage to the heart tissues, and doctors already do this manually, he says.
Journal reference: Science Robotics, DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.aaw1977
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