Tags:interventional bronchoscopy, soft robotics and surgical robotics
Abstract:
Early lung tumors often appear in peripheral regions of the lung, making them difficult to access using traditional minimally invasive methods, such as bronchoscopy. Robotic solutions must be highly dexterous and miniaturized to reach peripheral lung regions. These properties can be found in soft robots making them ideal candidates for advancing bronchoscopic biopsy procedures. However, at the scale necessary for interventional bronchoscopy, the robot’s ability to transmit force is significantly limited. To address this limitation a soft robot with embedded steering, stabilization, and needle deployment capabilities is proposed to improve lung tissue biopsy procedures. Steering is accomplished via a fluidic bending actuator embedded into a continuum body. A radially-expansive actuator is also integrated into the continuum body to stabilize the robot within branches of the lung before taking a biopsy. An origami-inspired, bellows actuator deploys the needle from the tip of the robot once it has navigated to and stabilized at its target destination. The design and fabrication of these fluidic-actuated degrees of freedom enable the soft robot to maintain an overall diameter of 3.5 mm. At this scale, stabilization increases the robot’s effective stiffness by anchoring the robot to the surrounding anatomical tissue. Characterizations demonstrate that this effect increases the amount of force transmission through the robot’s tip. Needle deployment also demonstrates the ability to produce sufficient force when puncturing a tissue simulator. The soft robot is further evaluated with in-vitro experiments. Steering, stabilization, and needle deployment are used in sequence to propose a workflow in which the robot can reach the target region and successfully puncture the target tissue for biopsy.
A Fluidic Actuated Soft Robot for Improving Bronchoscopic Biopsy