Magnetic Catheter Optimized for Navigation in a Complex Vascular Network

Abstract

The magnetic catheter is one of the most used tools in medical robotics. However, cardiac ablation is the medical application that benefits from the strength of catheters. The size of these commercialized magnetic catheters is greater than 2.33mm which makes navigation in small arteries impossible. The objective is to develop a catheter capable of navigating in several organs in the human body to facilitate the treatment of pathologies. An optimal catheter of 1mm in diameter composed of three cylindrical permanent magnets is proposed in this article, this catheter comes from the modeling result based on the Euler-Bernoulli beam model and optimization of the catheter parameters using the genetic algorithm. This catheter can navigate in different areas and complex trajectories, with significant deflection angles. This allows several medical applications to benefit from the advantages of magnetic catheters such as interventional neuro-radiology. The manufacture of the optimal catheter allowed us to test its performance in vacuum space and also in a vascular network with a complex trajectory.