Design and performance evaluation of a haptic interface based on MR fluids for endovascular tele-surgery

In this paper, a magnetorheological (MR) fluids based haptic interface has been developed in master site to provide the haptic sensation to the interventionalist during endovascular tele-surgery. The novel design of haptic interface allows the interventionalist to apply conventional axial and radial motions to a rigid catheter which goes through the MR fluids. In addition, the haptic feedback in the axial direction can be generated by altered the viscosity of MR fluids. The actual force measurement is provided to assess the effectiveness of this haptic feedback. While to evaluate the performance of this master device, the virtual-reality (VR) simulator is as the slave side to execute the replicated motions, pull, push and twist of the virtual catheter, which is applied by interventionalist in master site. The ten operators are recruited to navigate a catheter through virtual cerebral-vessel. Experimental results indicate that the use of the proposed haptic interface has a benefit to avoiding the collision and improving the safety of endovascular tele-surgery.