Soft Robotic Delivery of Coiled Anchors for Cardiac Interventions

Leonardo Zamora Yañez, Jacob Rogatinsky, Dominic Recco, Sang-Yoep Lee, Grace Matthews, Andrew P. Sabelhaus, Tommaso Ranzani

Abstract: Trans-catheter cardiac intervention has become an increasingly available option for high-risk patients without the complications of open heart surgery. However, current catheterbased platforms suffer from a lack of dexterity, force application, and compliance required to perform complex intracardiac procedures. An exemplary task that would significantly ease minimally invasive intracardiac procedures is the implantation of anchor coils, which can be used to fix and implant various devices in the beating heart. We introduce a robotic platform capable of delivering anchor coils. We develop a kineto-statics model of the robotic platform and demonstrate low positional error. We leverage the passive compliance and high force output of the actuator in a multi-anchor delivery procedure against a motile in-vitro simulator with millimeter level accuracy.