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Project

Robust Force Sensing and Control for Smart Catheters

Atrial fibrillation (AFib) is a type of cardiac arrhythmia that is characterized by irregular electrical impulses originating from within the atria. Besides pharmaceutical options, catheterization procedures are often required for its proper treatment. In particular, radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is a catheterization procedure carried out to ablate regions of cardiac tissue that generate abnormal electrical impulses. The ablated tissue acts as an electrical insulator, which helps restore the normal electrical pathways and heart rhythm.

Nowadays, the challenges of RFA are plentiful. Patient anatomy and medical instruments are often visualized using fluoroscopy, which only provides two-dimensional gray-scaled images. This limits the spatial understanding of the anatomy and the relative position of instruments. Moreover, the controllability and dexterity of the used instruments are also lacking. This is mainly governed by the constrained, dynamic, and complex vascular and cardiac environments in which the instruments are to be operated. Force feedback from the catheter is either missing or limited. Furthermore, precise catheter position and force control is not possible. These are essential aspects that enable dynamic tissue motion tracking, contact force tracking, and overall interaction control. Improved interaction control to establish a constrained contact force upon fragile tissue and allowing the catheter to accommodate to the beating heart motion is thus highly advantageous.

This thesis aims to improve state-of-the-art RFA interventions by incorporating advanced sensing and control functionalities for interventional catheters. Fiber optic shape sensing (FOSS) technology serves as the building block in this work. In particular, multi-core fibers (MCFs) with inscribed fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) are the fundamental constituents. As such, this thesis aims to develop advanced shape and force sensing strategies together with a robotic system to enable improved catheter visualization, interaction measurement, and control functionalities.

Date:30 Mar 2018 →  27 Mar 2023
Keywords:Cardiovascular catheterization, Force sensing and control, Shape sensing
Disciplines:Control systems, robotics and automation, Design theories and methods, Mechatronics and robotics, Computer theory
Project type:PhD project