Endoscope Fold-Down Mechanism for Duodenum Navigation
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional endoscopes with side optics are complex, expensive, and difficult to sterilize, leading to bacterial contamination, and have limited usability due to their specific design and difficulty in navigating body cavities, especially in areas like the duodenum where they cannot be aligned prograde.
Innovation Solution
A fold-down mechanism with wedge-like segments and a flexible slide-off plate that allows the endoscope head to be aligned forward, laterally, or backward, reducing the risk of instrument blockage and enhancing navigation by creating a continuous, smooth working channel surface.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If conventional endoscopes with side optics are used to enable lateral viewing in the duodenum, then imaging capability in tight spaces is improved, but device complexity and manufacturing cost increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The endoscope shaft is divided into multiple rigid segments that can be actively bent relative to each other using deflectors. This segmentation allows the endoscope to achieve lateral viewing angles in tight spaces like the duodenum while maintaining a simpler overall structure compared to dedicated side-optics endoscopes.
Solution Approach 2:
The endoscope is designed with a prograde optic and working channel that can be oriented in multiple directions through active bending. This multi-functional design allows the same device to perform both forward viewing and lateral viewing tasks, eliminating the need for separate specialized endoscopes.
2Adaptability or versatility
If conventional endoscopes with side optics are used for lateral viewing, then navigation in the duodenum is improved, but ease of sterilization deteriorates leading to bacterial contamination
Solution Approach 1:
The endoscope is designed as a disposable single-use device. This eliminates the sterilization problem entirely by ensuring the device is used only once and then discarded, preventing bacterial contamination and biofilm formation while maintaining reliable navigation capabilities in the duodenum.
3Manufacturing precision
If the endoscope shaft is made rigid to maintain structural integrity, then manufacturing precision is improved, but ease of operation in body cavities deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The shaft is segmented into rigid sections connected by active bending mechanisms. Each segment maintains manufacturing precision and structural integrity, while the collective arrangement allows the endoscope to navigate complex body cavities through controlled bending at the segment interfaces.
Solution Approach 2:
The endoscope transitions from a static rigid structure to a dynamic segmented structure that can actively bend and change configuration. This allows the device to adapt its shape to navigate body cavities while maintaining the structural integrity of individual rigid segments.
4Adaptability or versatility
If deflectors are used to achieve bending, then adaptability in navigation is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The deflectors are integrated into the segmented shaft structure, with each segment capable of active bending. This segmentation distributes the complexity across multiple simple units rather than requiring a single complex bending mechanism, achieving navigation adaptability through modular design.
Data Source
AI summary
An endoscope with a fold-down mechanism for holding an endoscope head at the distal end of an endoscope section so that it can be folded down or bent, with a number of segments which can be actively angularly adjusted relative to one another by way of at least one actuating element, which, in the side view, have two end faces which are aligned with respect to one another and a cylindrical jacket which defines a wedge back section at a cylindrical jacket section with maximum axial length, and which form at least one working channel in the longitudinal direction of the endoscope. The working channel in a wedge back section of each segment breaks through the cylinder jacket in the radial direction of the endoscope, and the segments are connected in the wedge back section by a flexible connecting plate in the longitudinal direction of the endoscope.