Calibration of magnetic platform prototype for vision-based drugs delivery inside human cochlea

Abstract

The magnetic particles actuated by an external magnetic field present a promising solution as drug carrier at the inner ear (cochlea). This technique allows non-invasive drug delivery with minimal hydraulic force and very high precision. In this work, magnetic prototyping platform for intra cochlear drug delivery procedure is proposed. This platform is composed by magnetic actuator mounted on a robot end-effector and an hybrid vision system. The latter consists of a camera to control the position of magnetic actuator, two microscopes to recover the position of the magnetic particles and the 3D structure of the cochlea. The hybrid vision system allows real-time tracking of magnetic particles inside the artificial cochlea. The accuracy of the drug delivery strategy depends strongly on the calibration of the vision system. In this paper a method to calibrate the hybrid vision system is proposed and validated with experimental results.