Design and Analysis of a Long-range Magnetic Actuated and Guided Endoscope for Uniport VATS

Abstract

This paper presents a long-range magnetic actuated and guided endoscope for uniport video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS). In VATS, the incision is quite narrow and part of the chest wall may be very thick. So, the magnetic endoscope system is required to produce sufficient attractive force at a considerable distance with a compact dimension. In this paper, a magnetic endoscope system is developed to meet the aforementioned clinical demands. In the system, both the internal and external units consist of two cylindrical magnets at both ends and a semi-cylindrical magnet in the middle. Coupled with the magnetic field from the external unit, the internal endoscope can achieve anchoring, tilting, panning, and translating to provide the desired view for the surgeon. The rotation of the endoscope is dynamically modeled by combining magnetic theory and coordinate transformation. The prototype is made with a boundary box of 10×14×56 mm, which can be inserted through the narrow incision in VATS. In the experiment, the developed models of anchoring, tilting, and panning were verified. The magnet configuration in the system can achieve a static anchoring distance of 95 mm and exhibits enhancement in attractive force compared with other designs.