The business of snaking catheters down narrow vasculature has consumed a lot of engineering time by medical device designers. Highly flexible, hydrophobic materials with novel properties have allowed procedures that were previously unthinkable to be done in a minimally invasive fashion. Yet, challenges remain in being able to confidently navigate a catheter tip to difficult locations, and the ionizing radiation from fluoroscopes that are used to image the catheter tip is in itself a health risk.
Clinical researchers at University of California, San Francisco have now developed a new system that uses the magnetic field of an intraoperative MRI to move a catheter through vessels with high precision. The system relies on a new catheter tip with a built-in solenoid through which electric current is applied. By controlling the strength of the current, the force that the magnetic field applies to the catheter changes. The team tested the system successfully in vascular phantoms and predict the technology will find applications in the future of vascular surgery.
Study in Journal of Visualized Experiments: Magnetically-Assisted Remote Controlled Microcatheter Tip Deflection under Magnetic Resonance Imaging…