Magnetorheological-Elastomer-Based and Hydraulically Steerable Actuator for Micro Guidewire and Catheter

IF 3.4 Q2 ENGINEERING, BIOMEDICAL IEEE transactions on medical robotics and bionics Pub Date : 2025-01-13 DOI:10.1109/TMRB.2025.3527718

Min Sung Kim;Chan Young Park;Doo Yong Lee

{"title":"Magnetorheological-Elastomer-Based and Hydraulically Steerable Actuator for Micro Guidewire and Catheter","authors":"Min Sung Kim;Chan Young Park;Doo Yong Lee","doi":"10.1109/TMRB.2025.3527718","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The pressure-driven mechanisms for steerable guidewires and catheters are difficult to fabricate when miniaturized to submillimeter-scale. Micro bubbles resulting from molding or surface irregularities due to surface tension can affect the actuation performance as the outer diameter of the pressure-driven actuator decreases to the submillimeter-scale. This paper presents a novel fabrication method to manufacture pressure-driven actuators of submillimeter-scale. The proposed fabrication method utilizes magnetorheological (MR) elastomer and magnetic field to determine the geometric dimensions of the actuator with micro-scale precision. An actuator of the diameter of 0.7 mm and the eccentricity of <inline-formula> <tex-math>$80~\\mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula>m is designed and fabricated with absolute errors of <inline-formula> <tex-math>$12~\\mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula>m and <inline-formula> <tex-math>$3~\\mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula>m, respectively. The steering performance of the fabricated micro actuator is tested through experiments. The actuator can achieve a sharp bending angle of 124 degrees with a length of 5.41 mm, by optimizing the eccentricity through the finite-element analysis.","PeriodicalId":73318,"journal":{"name":"IEEE transactions on medical robotics and bionics","volume":"7 1","pages":"77-84"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4000,"publicationDate":"2025-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"IEEE transactions on medical robotics and bionics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10839073/","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENGINEERING, BIOMEDICAL","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

The pressure-driven mechanisms for steerable guidewires and catheters are difficult to fabricate when miniaturized to submillimeter-scale. Micro bubbles resulting from molding or surface irregularities due to surface tension can affect the actuation performance as the outer diameter of the pressure-driven actuator decreases to the submillimeter-scale. This paper presents a novel fabrication method to manufacture pressure-driven actuators of submillimeter-scale. The proposed fabrication method utilizes magnetorheological (MR) elastomer and magnetic field to determine the geometric dimensions of the actuator with micro-scale precision. An actuator of the diameter of 0.7 mm and the eccentricity of

$80~\mu $

m is designed and fabricated with absolute errors of

$12~\mu $

m and

$3~\mu $

m, respectively. The steering performance of the fabricated micro actuator is tested through experiments. The actuator can achieve a sharp bending angle of 124 degrees with a length of 5.41 mm, by optimizing the eccentricity through the finite-element analysis.

查看原文