Application of the HeartLander crawling robot for injection of a thermally sensitive anti-remodeling agent for myocardial infarction therapy
Abstract
The injection of a mechanical bulking agent into the left ventricular (LV) wall of the heart has shown promise as a therapy for maladaptive remodeling of the myocardium after myocardial infarct (MI). The HeartLander robotic crawler presented itself as an ideal vehicle for minimally-invasive, highly accurate epicardial injection of such an agent. Use of the optimal bulking agent, a thermosetting hydrogel developed by our group, presents a number of engineering obstacles, including cooling of the miniaturized injection system while the robot is navigating in the warm environment of a living patient. We present herein a demonstration of an integrated miniature cooling and injection system in the HeartLander crawling robot, that is fully biocompatible and capable of multiple injections of a thermosetting hydrogel into dense animal tissue while the entire system is immersed in a 37°C water bath.
BibTeX
@conference{Chapman-2010-10531,author = {Michael P. Chapman and Jose L. Lopez Gonzalez and Brina Goyette and Kazuro L. Fujimoto and Zuwei Ma and William R. Wagner and Marco A. Zenati and Cameron Riviere},
title = {Application of the HeartLander crawling robot for injection of a thermally sensitive anti-remodeling agent for myocardial infarction therapy},
booktitle = {Proceedings of 32nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC '10)},
year = {2010},
month = {September},
pages = {5428 - 5431},
keywords = {surgery, medical robotics, heart, heart failure, mobile robots},
}