Augmented Reality Assisted Robotic Endovascular Surgery: A Pilot Study

Cardiovascular diseases, including Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms (AAA), are a major global health concern, causing millions of deaths annually [1]. The standard treatment for AAA involves minimally invasive endovas- cular surgery, inserting catheters and guidewires through the femoral artery to the target lesion, guided by X- ray Fluoroscopy. Challenges in this procedure include difficulty in manipulating the catheter tip, increased risk of vessel dissection, and reliance on surgeon skills [2]. Robotic platforms, like CathBot developed at Imperial College London, aim to enhance traditional surgery by providing remote manipulation of endovascular instru- ments, improving accuracy and repeatability [3]. Despite advancements, preventing inadvertent contact between instruments and vasculature remains a challenge. Our work addresses these limitations with a threefold con- tribution: (1) Development of a surgical scene sim- ulator that aesthetically replicates deformable tissue- instrument interaction, (2) Integration of such simulator with augmented reality (AR) technology and Cathbot, thus introducing the first steps towards a novel guidance system for endovascular navigation that, at this stage of development, could be used by clinicians as a training tool, and (3) Experimentation of the proposed system with users that have no prior experience with AR in guiding the instrument navigation.