Shared control of a magnetic microcatheter for vitreoretinal targeted drug delivery

Retinal diseases including age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy are leading causes of visual impairment and a growing medical crisis worldwide. As a result, new therapies and methods of safely delivering these new therapies can be of significant benefit to society. In this paper, we present a proof-of-concept for performing drug delivery using flexible magnetic microcatheters. The potential benefits of these catheters are that they are safer to use than existing rigid vitreoretinal tools, are precisely manipulable, and can be used to deliver lower dosages of therapeutic agents to precisely targeted locations on the retina with higher efficacy. The task of positioning the catheter tip is shared between a human operator and a control algorithm, which have complementary skills and can separately address different aspects of the overall task. The system was tested in an eye-phantom by an untrained operator with a 93% success rate in reaching 43 target points uniformly dispersed over the retina.