Design and control of a thermal device for bone cement injection

Abstract

This paper presents an original robotized system that reduces potential bone cement leakage during vertebroplasty procedures while providing a longer injection time to radiologists. The system design meets the requirements of vertebroplasty procedures in terms of injection speed, consumables and medical environment. Our contribution relies on the design, dimensioning and control of a device regulating the injected cement temperature, that is one of the main factors affecting the evolution of the cement viscosity. To control the system, thermal exchanges are first modeled from the physical equations of heat and mass transfer. Then, a simple control method is presented and experimentally assessed to confirm the ability to influence the flowing cement temperature at the center of the stream within an acceptable time.