Development of a Master-Slave Robotic System for Vascular Interventional Surgery

Robot-assisted vascular interventional surgery (VIS) can effectively reduce the surgeon’s exposure to X-ray radiation. However, some existing robotic system cannot meet the surgical requirements for rapidly exchanging catheter/guidewire or lack force detection. These would waste patients’ valuable treatment time and increase the system’s insecurity. This paper presents a developed master–slave vascular intervention robotic system. It allows for quick catheter/guidewire installation and has force feedback. This paper analyzes the structure of force measurement on the slave side. Different axial force accuracies are obtained by selecting two flexible materials for the axial force calibration part. The results show that the influence of the flexible material on the accuracy of the axial force plays an important role. In addition, the stability of the system’s axial force measurement is verified through the endo vascular evaluator (EVE) model experiment. Finally, the effects of material and axial force accuracy are discussed. The system developed in this paper will make a certain contribution to the development of a master–slave robotic system for VIS.