Research area: Robot-Assisted Endovascular Procedure.
Cardiovascular diseases are taking the lives of 17.9 million people every year, 31% of all global deaths, and this rate keeps increasing every year. Advances in endovascular intervention in recent years have transformed patient survival rates and post-surgical quality of life. Compared to open surgery, it has the advantages of faster recovery, reduced need for general anaesthesia, reduced blood loss and significantly lower mortality. However, the endovascular intervention involves complex manoeuvring of pre-shaped catheters to reach target areas in the vasculature. Some endovascular tasks can be challenging for even highly-skilled operators.
We are currently developing a new robotic platform for endovascular surgery (VIDEO) incorporating novel device designs with improved imaging based on MR. The use of robotics and computer assistance in endovascular intervention aims to address some of the current clinical challenges - such as limited intra-operative navigation - with the added benefit of allowing the operator to remotely control and manipulate devices.
Assignment’s themes (in the context of Robot-Assisted Endovascular Procedure):
- Design and development of novel MR-safe robotic devices (human-machine interfaces and remote manipulators) for targeted therapy [Hardware design and development];
- Optimized MR-based surgical navigation for robot-assisted procedures [Software development, image processing];
- Enhanced control framework for surgical robots [Control, AI].
Relevant References
Kundrat, G. Dagnino, T.M.Y. Kwok, M.E.M.K. Abdelaziz, W. Chi, A. Nguyen, C. Riga, G.-Z. Yang, “An MR-Safe Endovascular Robotic Platform: Design, Control, and Ex-Vivo Evaluation”, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 2021 - https://doi.org/10.1109/TBME.2021.3065146
Nguyen, D. Kundrat, G. Dagnino, W. Chi, M. Abdelaziz, Y. Ma, T. Kwok, C. Riga, G.-Z. Yang, “End-to-End Real-time Catheter Segmentation with Optical Flow-Guided Warping during Endovascular Intervention”, IEEE Int. Conf. Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2020, Paris, 2020 - link
Chi, G. Dagnino, T. Kwok, A. Nguyen, D. Kundrat, M. Abdelaziz, C. Riga, C. Bicknell, G.-Z. Yang, “Collaborative Robot-Assisted Endovascular Catheterization with Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning”, IEEE Int. Conf. Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2020, Paris, 2020 - link
Dagnino, J. Liu, M. Abdelaziz, W. Chi, C. Riga, G.-Z. Yang, “Haptic Feedback and Dynamic Active Constraints for Robot-Assisted Endovascular Catheterization”, 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Madrid, Spain, 2018 - link