A Dynamical Training and Design Simulator for Active Catheters

This work addresses the design of an active multi-link micro-catheter actuated by Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) micro actuators. This may be a response to one medical major demand on such devices, which will be useful for surgical explorations and interventions. In this paper, we focus on a training and...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Georges Dumont, Christofer Kuehl
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publishing 2008-11-01
Series:International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.intechopen.com/articles/show/title/a_dynamical_training_and_design_simulator_for_active_catheters
Description
Summary:This work addresses the design of an active multi-link micro-catheter actuated by Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) micro actuators. This may be a response to one medical major demand on such devices, which will be useful for surgical explorations and interventions. In this paper, we focus on a training and design simulator dedicated to such catheters. This simulator is based on an original simulation platform (OpenMASK). The catheter is a robotic system, which is evaluated by a dynamical simulation addressing a navigation task in its environment. The design of the prototype and its mechanical model are presented. We develop an interaction model for contact. This model uses a real medical database for which distance cartography is proposed. Then we focus on an autonomous control model based on a multi-agent approach and including the behaviour description of the SMA actuators. Results of mechanical simulations including interaction with the ducts are presented. Furthermore, the interest of such a simulator is presented by applying virtual prototyping techniques for the design optimization. This optimization process is achieved by using genetic algorithms at different stages with respect to the specified task.
ISSN:1729-8806
1729-8814