Endoscopic Pan/Tilt Camera for Thorax Interventions – Design and first results

• Main Authors: Mrokon Alexander, Pott Peter P., Steger Volker
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: De Gruyter 2019-09-01
• Series: Current Directions in Biomedical Engineering
• Subjects: pan/tilt-camera; thorax interventions; magnetic anchoring
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1515/cdbme-2019-0130

Minimally invasive surgery in some cases suffers from a limited view because certain areas are obscured by others. In this paper, a system is described, which can be used in minimally invasive procedures as an addition to a standard endoscope to improve the range of view. Through FEM simulation a magnetic circuit was designed to position the camera head. Subsequently, a camera positioning system was set up that includes an extracorporeal and an intracorporeal unit. The first controls the intracorporeal system. The latter has a camera inclination angle of up to 65° and an additional vertically downward viewing angle when aligned in parallel (inclination angle 0°). The panning angle is 360°. The camera system was evaluated in lab and cadaver trials. It has been found that the size of the intracorporeal system (16 × 10 × 150 mm) represents a major problem. Future work will focus of the reduction of the system’s size, the improvement of the camera image quality, and design changes considering mechanical stability.