An innovative platform for treatment of vascular obstructions: System design and preliminary results

The quest for miniaturization of interventional devices and the integration between external surgical platforms and internal therapeutic tools are continuously fostering research in the biomedical field. Operating in the cardiovascular system poses dramatic challenges, but it also represent the elective application for highly targeted therapeutic devices. In this paper we present a robotic platform for treating vascular obstructions. It integrates a system for locomotion and navigation based on magnetic dragging and ultrasound tracking, a therapeutic module which involves mechanical attack to the obstruction by means of high intensity focused ultrasound, and a collection/retrieval module exploiting magnetic nano-particles to bind the obstruction debris and to drag them to a safe region for removal. Here we illustrate the system overview and the technical and theoretical instruments for developing the overall platform; preliminary results, together with future planned works, are reported in order to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.