Catheter kinematics for intracardiac navigation.

Steerable catheters are utilized frequently in minimally invasive cardiac interventions. Despite their extensive applications, the properties of the steerable section of such devices have not been thoroughly investigated. In this paper, the kinematics of the distal shaft of the catheters is modeled, and the catheter's reachable workspace and its singular configurations are studied. The modeling is empirically validated through experiments with actual catheters mounted on a specialized robot. The statistical analysis of the experiments verify the effectiveness of the proposed model in estimating the catheter's tip position. In the experiments, the modeling error does not exceed 2.66 +/- 1.96 mm, and the mean absolute error in position coordinates is less than 1.55 mm. In addition, the linear relationship between the model and the measured position vectors is demonstrated, and the significance of the modeling goodness of fit is established. Based on the precision and computational effectiveness of the method, the applicability of the modeling to control and simulation purposes is postulated.