Low Profile Intraluminal Filter with Sigmoidal Wire Members
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional intraluminal medical devices, particularly filters, face challenges in achieving a low profile design due to bulkiness, which limits their navigability and deployability in body vessels, especially in small diameter vessels and around curves, angles, and side branch openings.
Innovation Solution
The development of low profile intraluminal filters featuring wire members with sigmoidal curves and connectors that form open cells, allowing for fluid flow while maintaining a minimal structure, reducing the need for additional centering structures and enhancing compressibility for easier delivery through body vessels.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional filter designs are used to enhance filtering function, then the extent of interaction between filter and fluid flow is increased, but the overall bulk of the device increases
Solution Approach 1:
The filter is divided into multiple individual struts or bars that are arranged in a specific pattern. Each strut is a separate element that can be independently optimized, allowing the filter to achieve effective filtration through the collective arrangement of multiple thin elements rather than requiring a single bulky structure.
Solution Approach 2:
The filter design transitions from a two-dimensional planar structure to a three-dimensional cylindrical or conical configuration. This dimensional change allows the filter to interact with fluid flow across multiple radial dimensions while maintaining a compact axial profile, effectively increasing filtration surface area without proportionally increasing overall device bulk.
2Ease of operation
If the delivery system outer diameter is increased to accommodate the intraluminal medical device, then the device can be more easily delivered, but the ability to navigate past curves, angles, and side branch openings is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The delivery system employs a balloon-expandable stent that can dynamically change its diameter. During navigation, the stent maintains a compressed low-profile configuration that allows passage through tortuous vessels and small side branches. Upon deployment, the balloon is inflated to expand the stent to its full functional diameter, providing both navigability during delivery and structural support after implantation.
Solution Approach 2:
The stent is nested within a delivery catheter in a compressed state, similar to a nested doll structure. This allows the relatively large stent to be contained within a small-diameter delivery system, enabling the device to navigate through small vessels and curved paths while maintaining the capability to expand to a larger functional size at the target site.
3Adaptability or versatility
If the intraluminal medical device is compressed to minimize delivery system diameter, then navigability is improved, but the compressibility is limited by material and construction
Solution Approach 1:
The stent is constructed from flexible metallic struts or thin-walled tubular elements that can elastically deform during compression and expansion. This flexibility allows the device to be compressed to a small diameter for delivery while maintaining structural integrity and the ability to reliably expand to the functional configuration upon deployment.
Solution Approach 2:
The device utilizes phase transition or elastic deformation principles where the material properties change during the compression-expansion cycle. The stent material is selected to exhibit superelasticity or shape memory characteristics, allowing it to be compressed to low-profile dimensions for delivery and then return to its expanded functional shape through temperature change, mechanical force, or phase transition upon deployment.
Data Source
AI summary
A low profile intraluminal filter includes first and second wire members that define arcuate paths having only a single sigmoidal curve. Connectors join the wire members to form an opening between the wire members. Each connecting member of a plurality of connecting members is connected to the first and second wire members and extends across the opening. The plurality of connecting members provides a plurality of open cells that permit passage of fluid flow through the opening when the filter is deployed within a body vessel.