A novel robotic system for flexible ureteroscopy

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Interventional robots currently exist for flexible ureteroscopy (fURS). However, force feedback and intra-renal pressure, which are important in fURS, were rarely considered when designing these robots. METHODS: We propose a novel robotic system for fURS integrated with partial force feedback function that is the bending knob's torque feedback of the flexible ureteroscope, and intra-renal pressure monitoring. The proposed robotic system adopts commercial haptic device to realize torque feedback. In addition, we further propose a neural network-based method to optimize the operation of above haptic device. RESULTS: Experimental results show that the slave robot can capture the variation of bending conditions and feedback to the operator, and can also accurately monitor the intra-renal pressure. Besides, the neural network-based method shows its potential in improving the operation. CONCLUSIONS: The results confirm the feasibility of proposed robot's functions. In vivo experiments are needed to further evaluate this system in future work.