A Hand-Held Non-Robotic Surgical Device to Compensate for Wire Length in Unpredicted Paths

This paper describes a surgical device that uses a compensation mechanism without motors and electronics to reduce the backlash in the end-effector. The device improves the precision and accuracy of surgical operations that involve unpredictable curved paths at a low cost. The device includes a flexible tube that moves along a curved path and a mechanism that compensates for the change in the length of the wire that actuates the end-effector as it follows an unpredictable path. The compensation mechanism minimizes the wire slack by utilizing a slider and spring mechanism that can maintain the pull wire length but can also move freely to extend the wire length as needed. We maximized the compensable wire length by optimizing the device driving parameters via simulation, verified the device performance experimentally, and built a fully operational prototype. The backlash of the device end-effector was reduced by approximately 38.3% compared to a device without compensation. Surgeons used the prototype with animal models in vivo and evaluated it as convenient and easy to manipulate. A hand-held non-robotic surgical device that compensates for wire length in unexpected curved paths to reduce end-effector backlash was demonstrated. The performance of the prototype was validated by driving, backlash, and hysteresis measurements, and in vivo animal experiments. This study is a significant step towards the development of a high-precision and low-cost surgical device for use in deep and narrow anatomies with unpredictable curved paths.