Figure 2. Description of the telerobotic neurointerventional system.

(A) The robot arm has 7 degrees of freedom (DOF) with kinematic redundancy for flexible manipulation and safer operation in cluttered environments. The guidewire has a magnetically responsive tip that contains magnetic particles, and hence can be steered by the actuating magnet at the robot arm’s end-effector. The guidewire is compatible with a standard microcatheter which travels over the guidewire along the navigated path. The guidewire and the microcatheter can be advanced/retracted by a pair of advancing units, each of which uses a worm drive to convert the rotary motion of the DC motor at the base to a linear motion. (B) The system is teleoperated from the remote-control console under feedback from real-time imaging of the guidewire/microcatheter in the blood vessels and virtual visualization of the robot arm. The magnetic guidewire is naturally visible under x-ray due to the embedded magnetic particles, and the position of the microcatheter can be identified by the radiopaque marker at the distal end. The robot arm is visualized in a virtual environment that replicates the real world on the control workstation to allow the operator to avoid collisions with surrounding objects while teleoperating the robot arm. (C) Spatial positioning of the magnet is achieved via 6-DOF position control of the robot arm’s end-effector with a joystick controller, and advancement/retraction of the guidewire and the microcatheter can be controlled either independently or simultaneously with the joystick buttons.