Novel design of honeybee-inspired needles for percutaneous procedure

Abstract

The focus of this paper is to present new designs of innovative bioinspired needles to be used during percutaneous procedures. Insect stingers have been known to easily penetrate soft tissues. Bioinspired needles mimicking the barbs in a honeybee stinger were developed for a smaller insertion force, which can provide a less invasive procedure. Decreasing the insertion force will decrease the tissue deformation, which is essential for more accurate targeting. In this study, some design parameters, in particular, barb shape and geometry (i.e. front angle, back angle, and height) were defined, and their effects on the insertion force were investigated. Three-dimensional printing technology was used to manufacture bioinspired needles. A specially-designed insertion test setup using tissue mimicking polyvinyl chloride (PVC) gels was developed to measure the insertion and extraction forces. The barb design parameters were then experimentally modified through detailed experimental procedures to further reduce the insertion force. Different scales of the barbed needles were designed and used to explore the size-scale effect on the insertion force. To further investigate the efficacy of the proposed needle design in real surgeries, preliminary ex vivo insertion tests into bovine liver tissue were performed. Our results show that the insertion force of the needles in different scales decreased by 21-35% in PVC gel insertion tests, and by 46% in bovine liver tissue insertion tests.

A narrative review of the success of intramuscular gluteal injections and its impact in psychiatry

“…For example, 3D printing technology has been used to manufacture innovative needle designs that may have an important role to play in these fields. A recent paper presented new designs of bio-inspired needles to be used for injections [ 54 ]. Insect stingers have long been known to easily penetrate soft tissues.…”

Additive manufacturing: state of the art and potential for insect science

“…* [30] : Needles with designed inspired from honeybee sting give less pain than traditional needles. ** [32] : Pneumatic soft actuators designs were inspired by the arrangement of fiber in muscles and were fabricated through Additive Manufacturing.…”

“…Frei Otto who popularized lightweight structures was inspired by spiderwebs among others [18]. On the micro-scale, geometries of the stings of mosquitoes [29] and bees [30] were reproduced to create high-quality needles (fig2b).…”

“…Cutkosky and his team [39] used another manufacturing process called Shape Deposition Manufacturing (SDM), a process which combines moulding, parts embedding and assembly, to produce their walking robot inspired from cockroach because it is a straightforward method to embed actuators. The recent development of Hybrid Deposition Manufacturing, a technology comparable to SDM but with more parts being produced by 3D printing [40], could give [41]; b: Honeybee-inspired needles [30]; c: Biomimetic spiderweb [28]; d: Micro air vehicle with insect-inspired wings [42]; e: Robot arm building a cocoon-like structure in a similar way as silkworm [26]; f: Artificial antenna structure inspired from moth [43]; g: Multifunction beetle-inspired leg [35]; h: Natural and artificial shells for hermit crab preference tests [44] Additive Manufacturing an important role in this domain.…”

Why bees are critical for achieving sustainable development

“…The honeycomb structure of beehives is often a mainstay in structural engineering (Zhang et al 2015). Drawing inspiration from bee anatomy, the medical industry has benefited from innovations such as surgical needles adopted from the design of bee stingers (Sahlabadi and Hutapea 2018). Bee behaviour has inspired complex computer-based search and optimisation processes informing a new wave of genetic algorithms (Xing and Gao 2014).…”