Development of Biomedical Microrobot for Intravascular Therapy

Recently, coronary artery disease such as angina pectoris and myocardial infarction has become themajor causes of death. As a method of medical treatment for the disease, the pharmacological approaches and thesurgical operations are executed. Especially, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) using catheters are themostly preferred treatment for coronary artery diseases. The PCI technologies are advanced and the various usefuldevices are developed and utilized. However, some clinical operations such as the treatment of chronic totalocclusion (CTO) remain a limitation of PCI and a major challenge. As robot-assisted coronary interventions, thispaper proposes the microrobot for the therapy of CTO. The microrobot consists of the functions of positionrecognition, locomotion and treatment in the blood vessels. The functions of the microrobot can be validatedthrough in-vitro & in-vivo experiments. The innovative technologies and surgical concept using the microrobotare currently being developed