Multilevel Operation Strategy of a Vascular Interventional Robot System for Surgical Safety in Teleoperation

Remote-controlled vascular interventional robots have great potential for use in minimally invasive vascular surgeries in recent years due to their ability to reduce the occupational risk of surgeons and improve the stability and accuracy of surgical procedures. However, blood vessels will suffer from the damage caused by collision with medical instruments to some extent even though the surgeries are very successful. Moreover, when surgeons perform unsafe operations, the unsafe operations will not only seriously affect surgical safety (or even cause serious complications) but also restrict the continuity of operation. In this article, a multilevel concept for operating force is first introduced into surgical procedures as a reference for the choice and design of operation strategies. Based on this concept, a novel multilevel operation strategy is first proposed to reduce blood vessel damage, ensure surgical safety, and allow for continuous operation. This strategy can remind surgeons about the operative conditions in real-time, reduce collision to blood vessels, and eliminate unsafe operations online. A prototype was fabricated and calibrated through calibration experiments and the performance of the multilevel operation strategy was validated through in vitro and ex vivo experiments. Experimental results demonstrate the engineering effectiveness of the proposed method and motivate the need for further in vivo studies to evaluate improvement on surgical safety.