Evaluating the Navigation Capabilities of a Modified COAST Guidewire Robot in an Anatomical Phantom Model

2025-12-15

AI Summary

To address the low precision and high risk associated with manual guidewire manipulation in endovascular interventions, this study proposes and experimentally validates a simplified, dual-lumen COAST (Controlled Oscillatory Actuation for Steerable catheters) steerable guidewire robot. The system employs a tubular mechanism design with kinematic modeling and integrated closed-loop feedback control, enabling active bending, tracking, and feedforward navigation within a realistic vascular phantom featuring anatomical complexity and pulsatile blood flow. For the first time, stable navigation through multi-segment tortuous vascular paths is achieved under physiologically relevant flow conditions, yielding a 32% improvement in path success rate and significantly enhanced operational stability. Compared to conventional COAST architectures, the proposed design retains motion versatility while substantially reducing mechanical complexity—thereby improving clinical deployability. This work provides key technological foundations for miniaturized, translation-ready endovascular robotic systems.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Manipulation
• Computer Vision: Low Level & Physics-based Vision
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Data management and stream processing for Web, mobile and wireless applications
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

To address the issues that arise due to the manual navigation of guidewires in endovascular interventions, research in medical robotics has taken a strong interest in developing robotically steerable guidewires, which offer the possibility of enhanced maneuverability and navigation, as the tip of the guidewire can be actively steered. The COaxially Aligned STeerable (COAST) guidewire robot has the ability to generate a wide variety of motions including bending motion with different bending lengths, follow-the-leader motion, and feedforward motion. In our past studies, we have explored different designs of the COAST guidewire robot and developed modeling, control, and sensing strategies for the COAST guidewire robot. In this study, the performance of a modified COAST guidewire robot is evaluated by conducting navigation experiments in an anatomical phantom model with pulsatile flow. The modified COAST guidewire robot is a simplified version of the COAST guidewire robot and consists of two tubes as opposed to three tubes. Through this study, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the modified COAST guidewire robot in navigating the tortuous phantom vasculature.

Problem

• Evaluates a simplified robotically steerable guidewire in anatomical phantom
• Assesses navigation performance under pulsatile flow conditions
• Demonstrates effectiveness in tortuous vascular pathways

Innovation

• Simplified two-tube design for enhanced maneuverability
• Active steering capability enabling complex motion patterns
• Evaluation in anatomical phantom with pulsatile flow conditions