Magnetic-field navigation for catheters

摘要

Catheters are semi-rigid, hollow plastic tubes that are indispensable, when it comes to local surgery inside the heart, brain, arms, legs, or lungs. But how can a surgeon tell whether the catheter is going the right way? Most hospitals still use x-ray methods to check the catheter's progress. To navigate, the catheter's passage in real time, some ten to twenty x-ray images are made every second. Even though the radiation dose involved is very low, no radiation at all would be much healthier both/or the patient and the medical staff who run the risk of being exposed to the radiation on a daily basis. Researchers of the TU Delf faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science are currently developing a magnetic navigation system for medical instruments such as catheters and guide wires. A magnetic sensor on the tip of the medical instrument measures an external magnetic field and reports exactly where the tip of the instrument is located. In addition, the team is developing sensors that can measure a number of blood parameters simultaneously. Current systems allow the doctors to measure only a single parameter at a time so that a new catheter has to be inserted for each subsequent reading.