Overcoming the Force Limitations of Magnetic Robotic Surgery: Magnetic Pulse Actuated Collisions for Tissue‐Penetrating‐Needle for Tetherless Interventions

Abstract

The field of magnetic robotics aims to obviate physical connections between the actuators and end‐effectors. Such tetherless control may enable new ultraminimally invasive surgical manipulations in clinical settings. While wireless actuation offers advantages in medical applications, the challenge of providing sufficient force to magnetic needles for tissue penetration remains a barrier to practical application. Applying sufficient force for tissue penetration is required for tasks such as biopsy, suturing, cutting, drug delivery, and accessing deep‐seated regions of complex structures in organs such as the eye. To expand the force landscape for such magnetic surgical tools, an impact force‐based suture needle capable of penetrating in vitro and ex vivo samples with 3‐degrees‐of‐freedom (DOF) planar motion is proposed. Using custom‐built 14 and 25 G needles, generation of 410 mN penetration force is demonstrated, a 22.7‐fold force increase with more than 20 times smaller volume compared with similar magnetically guided needles. With the Magnetic Pulse Actuated Collisions for Tissue‐penetrating (MPACT)‐Needle, gauze mesh suturing onto an agar gel is demonstrated. In addition, the tip size is reduced to 25 G, a typical needle size for eye interventions, to demonstrate ex vivo penetration in a rabbit eye towards corneal injections and transscleral drug delivery.

MagNeed – Needle-Shaped Electromagnets for Localized Actuation Within Compact Workspaces

“…As a result, the magnetic bead experiences an uncontrolled motion, which is used to collide with and move the silica gel particles. Although the magnetic forces scale with the volume of the magnetic object, MagNeed can generate strong pulling forces that could be applied for impact-based interaction with soft tissues [3].…”

“…C ONTACTLESS actuation of micro-/milli-sized agents can open up novel treatments in medicine through autonomous navigation [1], targeted therapy [2], and surgery [3]. Among various contactless actuation methods (e.g., magnetic [4], acoustic [5], and thermocapillary [6]), remote magnetic manipulation has been proposed for propelling micro-/milli-sized agents within microfluidic channels and ex vivo vasculatures [7], [8].…”

Field‐Free Region Scanning‐Based Magnetic Microcarrier Targeting in Multibifurcation Vessels

“…[11][12][13][14][15] A multicoil platform can also be used to generate a directional magnetic force at the bifurcation located inside of its workspace. [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] This is not quite an efficient way to directly deliver the particle to the target area in aspect of realistic scenarios since the particle has to selectively pass through multiple bifurcations before approaching the targeted region. Modern catheterization may help to reduce the complexity of the task by minimizing the distance between the injection point and the targeted region.…”