Design and evaluation of a bio-inspired robotic hand for percutaneous coronary intervention

The percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) require complex operating skills of the interventional devices and make the surgeons being exposed to heavy X-ray radiation. Accurate delivery of the interventional devices and avoiding the radiation are especially important for the surgeons. This paper presents a novel dedicated dual-finger robotic hand (DRH) and a console to assist the surgeons to deliver the interventional devices in PCIs. The system is designed in the master-slave way which helps the surgeons to reduce the exposure to radiation. The mechanism of the DRH is bio-inspired and motions are decoupled in kinematics. In PCI procedures, the accuracy of the guidewire delivery and the catheter tip placement have significant effects on the surgical results. The performances of the DRH in delivering the guidewire and the balloon/stent catheter were evaluated by three surgical manipulations. The results show that the DRH has the ability to deliver the guidewire and the balloon/stent catheter precisely.