A Contactless and Biocompatible Approach for 3D Active Microrobotic Targeted Drug Delivery

Abstract

As robotic tools are becoming a fundamental part of present day surgical interventions, microrobotic surgery is steadily approaching clinically-relevant scenarios. In particular, minimally invasive microrobotic targeted drug deliveries are reaching the grasp of the current state-of-the-art technology. However, clinically-relevant issues, such as lack of biocompatibility and dexterity, complicate the clinical application of the results obtained in controlled environments. Consequently, in this work we present a proof-of-concept fully contactless and biocompatible approach for active targeted delivery of a drug-model. In order to achieve full biocompatiblity and contacless actuation, magnetic fields are used for motion control, ultrasound is used for imaging, and induction heating is used for active drug-model release. The presented system is validated in a three-dimensional phantom of human vessels, performing ten trials that mimic targeted drug delivery using a drug-coated microrobot. The system is capable of closed-loop motion control with average velocity and positioning error of 0.3 mm/s and 0.4 mm, respectively. Overall, our findings suggest that the presented approach could augment the current capabilities of microrobotic tools, helping the development of clinically-relevant approaches for active in-vivo targeted drug delivery.

Contactless acoustic micro/nano manipulation: a paradigm for next generation applications in life sciences

“…Although SAW tweezers rely on surface transmission of acoustic energy, they can be smartly adapted to perform 3-D or upstream actuation of agents against gravity. Conventional SAW-based strategies may incorporate a more realistic workspace architecture that emulate tubular biological vasculatures [134,135]. A previously suggested method of designing flexible transducers or piezoelectric substrate may allow SAW devices to be attached to these tubular microchannels [125].…”

MILiMAC: Flexible Catheter With Miniaturized Electromagnets as a Small-Footprint System for Microrobotic Tasks

“…During the proof-of-concept validation presented in the next section, we use ferromagnetic microbeads, which can readily be manipulated with parallel electromagnets by exploiting magnetic forces (Figure 4). Despite their simple composition, microbeads can be coated with a wide range of substances to realise tasks such as targeted drug delivery [25].…”

Dynamic tracking of a magnetic micro-roller using ultrasound phase analysis

“…The gold standard for US imaging is Brightness(B)-mode, which has been employed to monitor MRs during navigation and cargo delivery tasks [16][17][18][19][20][21][22] . In B-mode, image contrast is associated with objects echogenicity, de ned as the ability to scatter US waves back to the source.…”