Development of an Intuitive Interface With Haptic Enhancement for Robot-Assisted Endovascular Intervention

Robot-assisted endovascular intervention has the potential to reduce radiation exposure to surgeons and enhance outcomes of interventions. However, the success and safety of endovascular interventions depend on surgeons' ability to accurately manipulate endovascular tools such as guidewire and catheter and perceive their safety when cannulating patient's vessels. Currently, the existing interventional robots lack a haptic system for accurate force feedback that surgeons can rely on. In this paper, a haptic-enabled endovascular interventional robot was developed. We proposed a dynamic hysteresis compensation model to address the challenges of hysteresis and nonlinearity in magnetic powder brake-based haptic interface, which were used for providing high-precision and higher dynamic range haptic perception. Also, for the first time, a human perceptual-based haptic enhancement model and safety strategy were integrated with the custom-built haptic interface for enhancing sensation discrimination ability during robot-assisted endovascular interventions. This can effectively amplify even subtle changes in low-intensity operational forces such that surgeons can better discern any vessel-tools interaction force. Several experimental studies were performed to show that the haptic interface and the kinesthetic perception enhancement model can enhance the transparency of robot-assisted endovascular interventions, as well as promote the safety awareness of surgeon.