The quest for miniaturization of interventional devices and the integration between external surgical platforms and internal therapeutic tools are continuously fostering research in the biomedical field. Operating in the cardiovascular system poses dramatic challenges, but it also represent the elective application for highly targeted therapeutic devices.In this paper we present a robotic platform for treating vascular obstructions. It integrates a system for locomotion and navigation based on magnetic dragging and ultrasound tracking, a therapeutic module which involves mechanical attack to the obstruction by means of high intensity focused ultrasound, and a collection/retrieval module exploiting magnetic nano-particles to bind the obstruction debris and to drag them to a safe region for removal.Here we illustrate the system overview and the technical and theoretical instruments for developing the overall platform; preliminary results, together with future planned works, are reported in order to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.

Exploitation of miniature robots and microrobots for endovascular therapeutics is a promising approach; besides chemical strategies (typically systemic), topical mechanical approaches exist for obstruction removal, which however produce harmful debris for blood circulation. Magnetic particles (MPs) are also studied for blood clot targeting. We investigated magnetic dragging of clots/debris by means of both electrostatic and antibody binding. We successfully produced magnetotactic blood clots in vitro and experimentally showed that they can be effectively dragged within a fluidic channel.We also exploited a magnetic force model in order to quantitatively analyze the experimental results, up to obtaining an estimate of the relative efficiency between electrostatic and antibody binding. Our study takes a first step towards more realistic in vivo investigations, in view of integration into microrobotic approaches to vascular obstructions removal.