Tuesday, April 01, 2008
IFOS announces award of phase I SBIR for “Fiber Optic Sensorized Tools for Cardiology Applications”

Current catheters and robot-assisted tools provide surgeons with unprecedented access to organs such as the heart. Specialized optical scopes or fibers can also provide a high-quality view of the operating site. However, they do not provide a sense of touch for probing and ablating abnormal tissues, etc. The challenges of producing miniature sensor packages, compatible with in-vivo applications and sufficiently sensitive to measure delicate contact forces, have precluded their application. In this project, IFOS addresses a critical problem in medical procedures involving catheters and robot-assisted minimally invasive surgical tooling: the lack of sensitivity at the end-effector. This research aims to add miniature fiber-optic force sensors to medical catheters. It will enhance the precision and safety of catheter ablation used for remedying irregular heartbeats from which a large sector of the population suffers. The techniques developed in this work will also have many spin-off applications including improved robotic surgery. The immediate focus is catheters for radio-frequency ablation with accurate force feedback allowing physicians to control tip forces precisely not only to make the lesion size more predictable and controllable, but also to minimize the chance of vascular perforation. In comparison to other sensors, IFOS’s fiber-optic sensors have several advantages: chemically inert, physically robust, immune to electromagnetic interference, and high sensitivity to small strains. Optical multiplexing for multiple sensors located on a single fiber allows an extremely compact device design. In addition, optical fibers can measure infrared emission/absorption properties and provide novel in-situ clinical spectroscopy and other diagnostic tools at the surgeon’s fingertips.

More News ››