Wide range force feedback for catheter insertion mechanism for use in minimally invasive mitral valve repair surgery

Mitral valve regurgitation (MR) is a condition in which heart's mitral valve does not close tightly, which allows blood to leak back into the left atrium. Restoring the dimension of the mitral-valve annulus by percutaneous intervention surgery is a common choice to treat MR. Currently, this kind of open heart annuloplasty surgery is being performed through sternotomy with cardiomyopathy bypass. In order to reduce trauma to the patient and also to eliminate bypass surgery, robotic assisted minimally invasive surgery (MIS) procedure, which requires small keyhole incisions, has a great potential. To perform this surgery through MIS procedure, an accurate computer controlled catheter with wide-range force feedback capabilities is required. There are three types of tissues at the site of operation: mitral leaflet, mitral annulus and left atrium. The maximum allowable applied force to these three types of tissue is totally different. For instance, leaflet tissue is the most sensitive one with the lowest allowable force capacity. For this application, therefore, a wide-range force sensing is highly required. Most of the sensors that have been developed for use in MIS applications have a limited range of sensing. Therefore, they need to be calibrated for different types of tissue. The present work, reports on the design, modeling and simulation of a novel wide-range optical force sensor for measurement of contact pressure between catheter tip and heart tissue. The proposed sensor offers a wide input range with a high resolution and sensitivity over this range. Using Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS) technology, this sensor can be microfabricated and integrated with commercially available catheters.