Study on active catheter system (3rd report, Modeling and experimental results of `in vitro' of active guide wire catheter using ICPF actuator)

In this paper, we propose a new prototype model of a microcatheter with active guide wire that has two bending degrees of freedom. The bending characteristics of the micro active catheter (MAC) have been measured by application of electricity in physiological saline solution. We also modeled this MAC for characteristic evaluation (bending characteristic, electric characteristic). Experimental results show that the models of the active catheter are reasonable. By using simulators (whose conditions are similar to those of a blood vessel of the human brain), we, also carried out simulation experiments `in vitro' and comparison of operability between the proposed catheter and conventional guide wire catheter. The experimental results indicate that the proposed micro catheter with active guide wire functions properly, and it can effectively improve the operability of conventional procedures for intravascular neurosurgery.