A Deployable Transseptal Brace for Stabilizing Cardiac Catheters

A bracing device for stabilizing cardiac catheters inside the heart was developed to provide surgical-level dexterity to minimally invasive catheter-based procedures for cardiac valve disease. The brace was designed to have a folding structure, which lies flat along a catheter during navigation through vasculature and then unfolds into a rigid bracing configuration after deployment across the interatrial septum. The brace was designed to be easily deployable, provide bracing support for a transseptal catheter, and also be compliant enough to be delivered to the heart via tortuous vasculature. This aims to improve dexterity in catheter-based mitral valve repair and enable other complex surgical procedures to be done with minimally invasive instruments.

Performance Evaluation of a Sensorized Arthroscopic Grasper

Force sensing minimally invasive instruments have gained increasing attention in recent years. Integrating these instruments within currently available surgical simulators can enhance the learning experience by measuring the forces applied by trainees and supplementing objective performance assessment. Recently, an arthroscopic grasper was designed and sensorized with Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors at Canadian Surgical Technologies and Advanced Robotics (CSTAR). Moreover, a custom low-cost (LC) interrogation system was developed to accompany the proposed sensorized tool. In this study, the custom LC interrogator was used and compared to the commercially-available Micron Optics sm130 (MO) interrogator. The hypothesis is that both of these systems can be used to measure forces within ±0.5 N as the acceptable margin for accuracy. Experimental results showed that the MO system meets the required accuracy for certain force directions. The LC system demonstrated 49% of the accuracy of the MO interrogator. The main advantage of the LC interrogator is its cost, which is 18% of the commercial interrogation system. For certain force directions, the performance was comparable to the defined criteria.