Robotic Control of Ultrasound Catheters for Intra-cardiac Visualization

Imaging catheters can provide real time imaging from within the heart, but manual navigation is difficult and requires extensive training. This study focuses on the first examples of automatically pointing ultrasound (US) catheters (frequently referred to as intracardiac echocardiography, or ICE) in in vivo animal studies. US catheters feature an US transducer at the tip for imaging cardiac structures. US catheters are manually steered to assist in high-resolution, low-distortion visualization during critical steps of minimally invasive cardiac procedures. Our four degree of freedom (DOF) robotic system automatically aims the imager at target anatomical structures and working instruments (Fig. 1), therefore alleviating the difficulty in manual control [1]. Automatically positioning flexible imaging instruments within the body can improve diagnoses and treatments of medical conditions such as cardiac arrhythmias (atrial fibrillation) while reducing the need for burdensome manual manipulation.