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Endotracheal intubation is a medical procedure to secure a patient's airways, which can be challenging in emergency situations due to an individual's anatomy. Intubation blades can benefit from an adjustable design with shape memory alloys. We present a novel blade design with two degrees of freedom, continuously transforming a straight into a curved blade. Our demonstrators reached mean angular deflections up to 16∘ without exceeding outer blade temperatures of 40∘C. Mean forces of almost 24N were applicable. This approach has the potential to reduce the complexity of intubation procedures and increase the success rate, especially in time-critical emergency situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Endotracheal intubation is a medical procedure to secure a patient's airways, which can be challenging in emergency situations due to an individual's anatomy. Intubation blades can benefit from an adjustable design with shape memory alloys. We present a novel blade design with two degrees of freedom, continuously transforming a straight into a curved blade. Our demonstrators reached mean angular deflections up to 16∘ without exceeding outer blade temperatures of 40∘C. Mean forces of almost 24N were applicable. This approach has the potential to reduce the complexity of intubation procedures and increase the success rate, especially in time-critical emergency situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Endovascular interventions require intense practice to develop sufficient dexterity in catheter handling within the human body. Therefore, we present a modular training platform, featuring 3D-printed vessel phantoms with patient-specific anatomy and integrated piezoresistive impact force sensing of instrument interaction at clinically relevant locations for feedback-based skill training to detect and reduce damage to the delicate vascular wall. Methods: The platform was fabricated and then evaluated in a user study by medical ( n = 10 ) and non-medical ( n = 10 ) users. The users had to navigate a set of guidewire and catheter through a parkour of 3 modules including an aneurismatic abdominal aorta, while impact force and completion time were recorded. Eventually, a questionnaire was conducted. Results: The platform allowed to perform more than 100 runs in which it proved capable to distinguish between users of different experience levels. Medical experts in the fields of vascular and visceral surgery had a strong performance assessment on the platform. It could be shown, that medical students could improve runtime and impact over 5 runs. The platform was well received and rated as promising for medical education despite the experience of higher friction compared to real human vessels. Conclusion: We investigated an authentic patient-specific training platform with integrated sensor-based feedback functionality for individual skill training in endovascular surgery. The presented method for phantom manufacturing is easily applicable to arbitrary patient-individual imaging data. Further work shall address the implementation of smaller vessel branches, as well as real-time feedback and camera imaging for further improved training experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Automatisierungstechnik is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The manipulation of flexible endoscopes is a procedure that requires great dexterity since it requires the synchronization and use of both hands in parallel. Imprecise handling during gastroendoscopy could harm the digestive tract. Our solution allows the physician to use only one hand to wirelessly control the forward, backward, and tip bending motion. The proposed system provides endoscopic vision and tactile impact force sensing at the tip to detect the force applied to tissue and thus avoid damage. We experimentally evaluate the handling of the robotic system in open space and inside a medical phantom. The results revealed a training effect with less time demand for task completion and reduction of average impact force after only 5 runs. The proposed system was successfully controlled using one hand and, together with the force information, could enhance the physician's experience during endoscopy. Future work will address axial control and an intensive user study with clinical experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart medical phantoms for training and evaluation of endovascular procedures ought to measure impact forces on the vessel walls worth protecting to provide feedback to clinicians and articulated soft robots. Recent commercial smart phantoms are expensive, usually not customizable to different applications and lack accessibility for integrated development. This work investigates piezoresistive films as highly integratable flexible sensors to be used in arbitrary soft vessel phantom anatomies over large surfaces and curved shapes providing quantitative measurement in the force range up to 1 N with 0.1 N resolution. First results show promising performance at the point of calibration and in a 5 mm range around it, with absolute measuring error of 28 mN and a standard deviation of ±10 mN and response times <500 ms. Future work shall address the optimization of response time and sensor shapes as well as the evaluation with experienced clinicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robots from material-based actuators offer high potential for small-scale robots with abilities hardly achievable by classical methods like electric motors. Besides excellent scaling to minimally invasive systems, allowing for omission of metallic components, such robots can be applied in imaging modalities such as MRI or CT. To allow for higher accessibility in this field of research, a facile method for fabrication of such soft actuators was developed. It comprises only two materials: graphene oxide and silicone elastomer. The facile fabrication method does not require specialized equipment. The resulting actuator is biocompatible and controllable by light mediated heat. The bending motion can be controlled by the intensity of applied infrared light and the actuator was experimentally shown to move five times its own weight. Thus, providing capabilities for a medical soft robotic actuator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]