Insect-inspired catheter aids in navigating the brain’s intricate pathways

With its fine and delicate blood vessels, the cerebrum presenting a distinct obstacle for surgeons trying to gain access to its many nooks and crannies, and there are constraints to what the existing catheters are able to achieve.

Researchers have developed a pioneering “steerable” catheter that takes inspiration from insects to safely traverse the brain’s arteries and blood vessels, which may open up new possibilities for treating hard-to-reach aneurysms.

An aneurysm is an uncommon swelling in the heart wall of a blood vessel. Neuro-surgeons presently deal with aneurysms in the cerebrum by initially putting wires into an artery near the groin, and this directs a catheter straight forward across the aorta and up toward the brain. The wires comprise curved tips that are utilized to steer around the various corners and junctures until the aneurysm is found.

The trouble is that the guide wires then need to be taken out to ensure that the catheter can deliver platinum coils to obstruct blood flow to the aneurysm and prevent brain hemorrhage. Nevertheless, this retrieval process usually shifts the catheter and changes its position, implying that some types of aneurysms can be extremely difficult to treat.

These include unruptured intracranial aneurysms in the cerebral artery, bubble-like lesions that are likely to rupture and influence more than 160 million individuals worldwide. Approximately a quarter of them cannot be treated because the aneurysm is too difficult to reach, leaving patients in danger of rupture, which also implies a chance of death and lasting incapacity.

Professor of medical engineering at the University of California (UC) San Diego and author of studies James Friend says that unfortunately, many of the most critical blood vessels we need to treat are among the most tortuous and delicate in the body. James Friend says that while robotics is on the rise to address many medical issues, the scalable deformable devices needed for these types of surgical treatments simply don’t exist.

To create them, Friend and his colleagues looked to the animal kingdom for inspiration, particularly the kind of deformation and microscale hydraulics shown in mating beetles, insect legs, and the flagellum. This has inspired the creation of what the group calls a soft, hydraulically actuated robotic microcatheter suitable for performing brittle neurosurgeries.

The group started by building concentric layers of silicone on top of each other, each with varying stiffness. This produced a silicone rubber catheter with a collection of interior pockets that are each pumped with harmless saline medium via a hand-held hand-held monitor adding hydraulic head pressure, enabling it to be driven like a “Nintendo for neurosurgeons”. The breakthrough was demonstrated in the cerebral artery of a pig, with the steerable tip perceptible on X-rays and the tool proving capable of driving the platinum spools.

Doctor Alexander Khalessi, the chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery at UC San Diego Health, said that as a brain surgeon, one of the challenges he has is to guide the Catheters into the fragile and deep recesses of the brain. Dr. Alexander Khalessi continues to say that the results today demonstrate proof of concept of a smooth, readily steerable catheter which would greatly enhance our ability to deal with brain aneurysms and various other neurological disorders. Dr. Alexandre Khalessi keeps on expressing his anticipation of advancing this new development towards patient treatment..

Further, the researchers intend to further improve on these promising initial results with a larger test in animals and ultimately in Humans.

Originally published by: Newatlas.com