An intuitive guidewire control mechanism for robotic intervention

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Medical Technology
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Teleoperated Interventional Robotic systems (TIRs) offer benefits like reduced radiation exposure and enhanced precision.
• Widespread adoption of TIRs is hindered by unintuitive control interfaces, leading to steep learning curves.
• Current interfaces deviate from traditional manual techniques, impacting user proficiency.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel control mechanism for intuitive operation of TIRs.
• To facilitate seamless adoption of robot-assisted interventions by addressing interface challenges.
• To enhance the user experience and reduce the learning curve for TIR operation.

Main Methods:

• An off-the-shelf medical torque device was augmented with a micro-electromagnetic tracker for control.
• Real-time motion mapping of the interface was used to extract control inputs for the TIR.
• Evaluation experiments utilized industrial-grade encoders to verify the efficacy of the control mechanism.

Main Results:

• Achieved a mean tracking error of 0.32 ± 0.12 mm (linear) and 0.54 ± 0.07° (angular).
• Determined an average time lag of 125 ms in tracking using pade approximation.
• The developed interface is ergonomically comparable, being 3.5 mm larger and 4.5 g heavier than traditional torque devices.

Conclusions:

• The novel control interface closely resembles traditional torque devices, preserving tactile feedback.
• Performance is comparable to state-of-the-art commercially available TIRs.
• This intuitive interface has the potential to significantly increase clinical adoption of robot-assisted interventions.