Frasson Luca, Ferroni Francesco, Ko Seong Young, Dogangil Gorkem, Rodriguez Y Baena Ferdinando
Imperial College London, London, UK.
Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy.
J Robot Surg. 2012 Sep;6(3):189-97. doi: 10.1007/s11701-011-0277-4. Epub 2011 Jun 3.
The ability to steer flexible needles and probes to access deep anatomical locations safely for medical diagnosis and treatment represents a current clinical and engineering research challenge. The behaviour of parasitic wasps has inspired the development of a novel steerable and flexible multi-part probe, which allows the control of its approach angle by adjusting the steering offset between probe segments, i.e. by means of a programmable bevel tip. This paper describes the experimental evaluation of several scaled-up proof-of-concept flexible probe prototypes to explore the effects of tip design (bevel-tip angle) and dimensions (outer diameter) on steering. For each prototype, a linear relationship between steering offset and curvature is confirmed. The effect of probe diameter and bevel-tip angle on steering performance is also analysed, with results confirming that larger bevel-tip angles and smaller probe diameters lead to larger curvature values, although improved steering comes at the price of a less stable insertion process.
将柔性针和探头安全地引导至深层解剖位置以进行医学诊断和治疗的能力，是当前临床和工程研究面临的一项挑战。寄生蜂的行为启发了一种新型可转向柔性多部件探头的开发，该探头可通过调整探头各段之间的转向偏移量（即通过可编程斜角尖端）来控制其接近角度。本文描述了对几个按比例放大的概念验证柔性探头原型进行的实验评估，以探索尖端设计（斜角尖端角度）和尺寸（外径）对转向的影响。对于每个原型，都证实了转向偏移量与曲率之间存在线性关系。还分析了探头直径和斜角尖端角度对转向性能的影响，结果证实，较大的斜角尖端角度和较小的探头直径会导致更大的曲率值，不过转向性能的提升是以插入过程稳定性降低为代价的。
