Automated Retinal Vein Cannulation on Silicone Phantoms Using Optical-Coherence-Tomography-Guided Robotic Manipulations

Retinal vein of the most common causes of vision loss, occurring when a blood clot or other obstruction occludes a retinal vein. A potential remedy for retinal vein occlusion is retinal vein cannulation, a surgical procedure that involves infusing the occluded vein with a fibrinolytic drug to restore blood flow through the vascular lumen. This article presents an image-guided robotic system capable of performing automated cannulation on silicone retinal vein phantoms. The system is integrated with an optical coherence tomography probe and a camera to provide visual feedback to guide the robotic system. Through automation, the developed system targets a vein phantom to within 20 μm and automatically cannulates and infuses the vascular lumen with dyed water. The system was evaluated through 30 experimental trials and shown to be capable of performing automated cannulation of retinal vein phantoms with no reported cases of failure.