Small, soft, and safe microactuator for retinal pigment epithelium transplantation

This paper proposes a novel surgical tool for the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) sheet transplantation. The proposed tool employs the principle of pneumatic balloon actuator (PBA). It is possible to design small, soft and safe surgical tool by using PBA because PBA is made of PDMS and driven by pneumatic pressure. These distinctive characteristics of PBA are attractive for such a challenging surgery as the RPE sheet transplantation in an eyeball. The designed head size of tool is 3 mm times 3 mm times 100 mum by taking account of the size of the RPE sheet (3 mm times 3 mm). The developed tool can perform sequential motions through independent control of different PBA so as to introduce and transplant the RPE sheet to an eyeball. Generated force by the movement of the transplantation tool is measured around 3 mN, which is allowable in an eyeball. Experimental results of both in vitro and in vivo test by using the developed tool will be reported to demonstrate feasibility of our strategy.