Steerable Catheter Tip with EMP Actuator for Vascular Navigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional catheters face challenges in steering their tips accurately through the vasculature due to the inflexibility of guide wires, requiring multiple catheters with different shapes and bending degrees, which increases inventory needs and risks of infections and trauma.
Innovation Solution
A catheter with a steerable tip embedded with an electromechanical polymer (EMP) actuator that can bend through a controllable angle, allowing precise steering by controlling electrical signals, and optionally incorporating sensors for dynamic adjustments and multiple actuator configurations to mimic various catheter shapes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional guide wires are made flexible to avoid trauma to surrounding tissues, then patient safety is improved, but steering capability deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The catheter is divided into distinct functional segments: a flexible shaft for safe navigation and a steerable tip with EMP actuators for precise positioning. This segmentation allows the flexible body to protect against trauma while the articulated tip provides steering control without requiring the entire catheter to be rigid.
Solution Approach 2:
The catheter tip is transformed from a static, pre-formed shape to a dynamic, actively controllable structure using electromechanical polymer actuators. These actuators enable real-time adjustment of the tip's bending angle and orientation, allowing the flexible catheter to steer dynamically through tortuous vasculature while maintaining overall flexibility for patient safety.
2Measurement precision
If multiple catheters with different preformed shapes are used to reach different locations, then steering accuracy is improved, but device complexity and inventory requirements worsen
Solution Approach 1:
A single catheter design incorporates multiple EMP actuators that can be independently controlled to create various tip configurations. This universal catheter can assume different shapes and bending patterns programmatically, replacing the need for multiple specialized catheters with fixed pre-formed shapes for different vascular access routes.
Solution Approach 2:
The catheter tip transitions from static pre-formed shapes to dynamic, programmable configurations. By controlling the activation sequence and duration of EMP actuators, the same physical catheter can achieve multiple effective shapes and bending degrees, enabling one catheter to perform the functions of many different catheters.
3Adaptability or versatility
If repeated catheter extraction and insertion is performed to reach different locations, then access to different vascular regions is improved, but risk of infection and trauma worsens
Solution Approach 1:
The steerable catheter with programmable EMP actuators serves as a universal platform that can reach multiple vascular destinations without requiring physical replacement. By electronically reconfiguring the tip shape and steering characteristics, the same catheter can access different coronary arteries, branches, and vascular regions, eliminating repeated insertions and extractions.
Solution Approach 2:
The catheter performs self-reconfiguration through embedded sensors and control systems that detect vascular geometry and automatically adjust tip orientation and shape. This self-adjusting capability allows the catheter to adapt to different vascular pathways in real-time, maintaining access versatility while remaining inserted, thereby avoiding the harmful effects of repeated manipulation.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Enables efficient, accurate, and repeatable articulation of the catheter tip, reducing the need for multiple catheters and minimizing procedural risks by allowing a single catheter to replace multiple conventional ones, thereby enhancing procedural safety and efficiency.
Implementation Method 1
an electromechanical polymer (EMP) actuator in the tip of the catheter that creates the required bending and motion
Data Source
AI summary
A catheter includes an electromechanical polymer (EMP) actuator disposed in a steerable tip at the distal end of the catheter. When activated, the EMP actuator deflects the steerable tip through an angle between 0 and 270 degrees, thus permitting the operator to steer the steerable tip through the vasculature. The steerable tip also has at least a first relatively stiff region and a second relatively flexible region, and the EMP actuator is provided next to the first relatively stiff region so that the steerable tip may toward the flexible region when activated. In one implementation, an external interface allows a user to select by name one of many sets of control signals, with each set of control signals being signals calibrated for configuring the catheter to mimic a known catheter.