When a person has had a stroke or aneurysm, they are likely to need a surgical procedure known as endovascular intervention.
A new robotic system designed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) can ensure patients receive treatment quickly, even if the doctor is not nearby.
In regular endovascular interventions, a specialized neurovascular surgeon guides a thin wire through one of the patient's brain blood vessels, up to the site of the blood clot.
Guided visually by intermittent X-ray imaging, the doctor then physically breaks the clotting portion of the blood, or administers medication to dissolve it.
It is very important that the procedure is carried out as soon as possible, before the patient is deprived of oxygen to the brain which can cause permanent damage.
Unfortunately, if the location of the patient is too far from the hospital where the neurosurgeon is located, it may be impossible to get them to the hospital on time.
This is where experimental new systems are designed to be used. The system incorporates an articulated robotic arm with a driving magnet at the end. This robot is next to the patient's head while lying on the operating table.
There is also a motorized linear drive unit, which pushes or pulls the same type of cable used in conventional endovascular interventions.
Surgeons located in different hospitals, use the mouse to advance and pull the wires inside the blood vessels, plus they use joysticks like those used in games to move the arm and rotate the magnet.
In tests performed on transparent scale models of blood vessels in the brain, neurosurgeons learned to use this system to direct wires to target locations after just one hour of training.
"We envisioned, instead of transporting patients from rural areas to big cities, they could go to local hospitals where nurses could set up this system," said MIT scientist Prof. Xuanhe Zhao as quoted by us from New Atlas.
"A neurosurgeon in a large medical center can watch live images of patients and use robots to operate. That is our future dream," he continued.