Paper Info
Title
Electrical Bio-Impedance Proximity Sensing For Vitreo-Retinal Micro-Surgery
Abstract
Retinal vein occlusion is a widespread eye vascular disease leading to vision loss because of clots obstructing a retinal vessel. Recent research investigated retinal vein cannulation, a promising treatment in which a microneedle injects a thrombolytic agent inside the clotted vessel. During this surgical procedure, the surgeon only relies on a microscope, looking through the patient eye's lens. Such visual feedback gives poor depth perception, with a risk to inject the agent underneath the retina. Such situation endangers the patient's eyesight and is to be avoided. This letter explores bio-impedance as a means to estimate the proximity between an insulated electrode and a retinal vessel. Experiments on five ex-vivo pig eyes showed that the impedance phase decreases as the electrode tip approaches the retinal vessel. Specific patterns in the impedance magnitude were detected. A dedicated algorithm showed 98% sensitivity and 100% specificity at a distance of 775 +/- 275 mu m away from the retinal vessels. Knowledge of the proximity can help the surgeon prevent damaging fragile retinal structures during retinal surgeries such as cannulation and scar tissue peeling. A minimally-invasive measurement principle of this technique is demonstrated on an ex-vivo pig head to show the feasibility of such technique in more realistic conditions.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1109/LRA.2019.2930482
IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS
Keywords
Field
DocType
Medical Robots and Systems, Surgical Robotics: Steerable Catheters/Needles
Biomedical engineering,Control engineering,Retinal,Engineering,Proximity sensing,Bio impedance
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
4
4
2377-3766
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
0
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Laurent Schoevaerdts110.72
Gianni Borghesan211314.01
Mouloud Ourak344.84
Dominiek Reynaerts47720.87
Emmanuel B. Vander Poorten510120.19