Stroke Care, Anywhere
More than half of Americans live over an hour away from a hospital that can perform a thrombectomy. The longer treatment is delayed, the higher the risk of serious long-term disability or death. The goal of this project is to have these medical robots deployed all over the country, where technicians would insert them into a patient through the femoral artery in the groin — the current entry method for many thrombectomies today — and then a physician would oversee the procedure from afar.
Patients would undergo standard pre-operative imaging to locate the blood clot and map their specific vasculature. As the procedure continues, contrast-enhanced images would be taken as it navigates the branches of the patient’s veins to ensure an accurate path. Once the robot has reached the clot, it will remove it using suction — a process called aspiration. Once the robot captures the clot, it will retract under continuous suction to remove the clot, and will inject contrast to verify that the vessels are fully reopened.
The research team aims to have a working prototype for use in preclinical research in five years.
Research Team:
In addition to lead investigator Morimoto, the research team includes UC San Diego electrical and computer engineering faculty Michael Yip, who will lead the automation team, and Nikolay Atanasov, who will lead computational simulation. Elliot Hawkes, associate professor of mechanical engineering at UC Santa Barbara, will lead the growing robot design and modeling. Robert Webster, professor of mechanical engineering and medicine at Vanderbilt, will assist with system design and clinical translation; Joshua Gafford, CTO of EndoTheia Inc, will lead the design of the steerable introducer and coordinate regulatory milestones along with David Haggerty, CEO of Vine Medical. Ron Alterovitz, professor of computer science at UNC Chapel Hill, will lead the effort to encode intelligence into the physical robot. Brian Yanoff, principal scientist at GE HealthCare, will lead imaging work; Jeremy Heit, professor of radiology at Stanford, will oversee fluoroscopy experiments and lead preclinical testing. Alexander Norbash, Dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Missouri at Kansas City will lead rural implementation.
This research was, in part, funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the United States Government.