Route Selection Assistance for Medical Instrument Delivery
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Solution Overview
Problem
The challenge in medical procedures is selecting an appropriate route for delivering medical instruments through blood vessels, which depends on the ease of delivery and patient burden, and is heavily influenced by the curvature and bending of blood vessel sites, varying significantly among patients, making it a burdensome task for operators, especially in transradial interventions where the vessels are thinner and more prone to spasm.
Innovation Solution
A route selection assistance system that receives site information, obtains image data of the patient's blood vessels, extracts potential routes, calculates route scores based on delivery ease and patient burden, and assigns rankings to facilitate easy selection of the most appropriate route for medical instrument delivery.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If the operator visually recognizes blood vessel images and selects routes manually, then the selection can be customized to patient-specific anatomy, but the operator burden increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs automated route extraction and evaluation, allowing the system to serve itself by processing blood vessel images and calculating route scores without requiring manual operator intervention for each analysis step
Solution Approach 2:
The manual visual recognition and selection process is replaced by an automated image processing system that extracts routes from images and calculates scores based on predefined criteria, substituting human cognitive effort with computational algorithms
2Object-affected harmful factors
If multiple blood vessel sites are navigated in transradial intervention, then the treatment can be performed with smaller patient burden, but the number of sites to navigate increases the complexity
Solution Approach 1:
The complex route navigation problem is segmented into multiple evaluable routes, each consisting of a sequence of blood vessel sites. The system divides the overall task into discrete route options that can be independently analyzed and scored
Solution Approach 2:
The system evaluates routes based on quantitative parameters such as the number of sites to navigate, the types of sites involved, and calculated route scores. By changing from qualitative assessment to quantitative parameter-based evaluation, the complexity is made manageable and comparable
3Adaptability or versatility
If the blood vessel has high curvature and bending, then the natural anatomy varies among patients, but the ease of medical instrument delivery decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The system evaluates specific local characteristics of blood vessel sites along each route, such as curvature and bending at individual sites. By assessing local quality parameters at each site rather than treating the entire route uniformly, the system can identify routes with favorable local conditions for instrument delivery
Data Source
AI summary
A route selection assistance system, a recording medium on which a route selection assistance program is recorded, a route selection assistance method, and a diagnosis method that enable easy selection of a route of a living body lumen for delivering a medical instrument to a site within a living body via the living body lumen. A route selection assistance system includes: a receiving section configured to receive an input of site information specifying a target site; an image obtaining section configured to obtain image information on a living body of a target patient; a route extracting section configured to extract a plurality of routes of a living body lumen; a ranking assigning section configured to assign rankings to the plurality of routes extracted by the route extracting section; and an output section configured to output the plurality of routes extracted and the rankings assigned by the ranking assigning section.