Towards Bilateral Teleoperation of a Standard Electrophysiology Catheter

Abstract

Robotic catheters have recently made their appearance in cardiac interventions such as RF ablation in treatment of arrhythmic heart fibrillation. Reduced exposure of the surgeon to ionizing radiation, more accurate tip positioning and shorter operation times are some of the claimed benefits. However, procedural outcome is highly dependent on the interaction force between the catheter and the heart tissue during ablation. Severe complications such as perforation of the heart wall occur in case too much force is used. Oppositely, inferior lesion quality and failed treatment results from too weak contacts during ablation. The long-term goal of our research exists in transforming a standard electrophysiological catheter into a bilateral teleoperation controlled one. This article discusses the first steps were a local force control method of a single degree of freedom catheter robot is investigated. The control algorithm introduced here tries to achieve a good force control in the presence of a moving elastic environment representing the beating heart. The algorithm also accounts for the use of sensors with low sampling rates. Simulation results show that the developed controller is able to follow the desired force trajectory and allows to dampen the oscillations in interaction forces compared to the case where no force control is used. Finally, we point at restrictions of the proposed method and indicate directions for further work.