Design of a Robotic Catheterization Platform With Use of Commercial Ablation Catheter

Cardiovascular diseases including atherosclerosis, thrombosis, aneurysm and arrhythmia remain the major cause of mortality in developed countries, accounting for 34% of deaths each year [1]. Commonly used minimally invasive vascular intervention with using catheters leads to higher success rate than open surgery [2]. Integrating robotic technologies into active control of catheters in teleoperation manner has promised to reduce radiation exposure to surgeons and improve accuracy during electro-physiological (EP) procedures [1]. Common used commercial robotic EP catheter platforms such as Sensei (Hansen Medical Inc., USA) and Niobe (Stereotaxis Inc., USA) are usually composed of a catheter driver (slave side) which can be remotely controlled by a console operator (master side). However, the Sensei catheters are more rigid and bigger than standard catheters because of their two-layer-sheath structure; and Magnetic Niobe systems are huge and expensive. In this paper, we propose a mechanism of remote-driving catheterization platforms in which a commercial tip-steerable ablation catheter (St. Jude Medical Inc., USA) (Fig. 1) is manipulated by a catheter driver in three degree of freedoms (DOF) (insertion/withdrawal, rotation and tip deflection). In addition, we also present the design of the control software based on Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) method which is expected to give the other researchers a guide line during robotic catheter design.