Toward Robotically Automated Femoral Vascular Access

Advanced resuscitative technologies, such as Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) cannulation or Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta (REBOA), are technically difficult even for skilled medical personnel. This paper describes the core technologies that comprise a teleoperated system capable of granting femoral vascular access, which is an important step in both of these procedures and a major roadblock in their wider use in the field. These technologies include a kinematic manipulator, various sensing modalities, and a user interface. In addition, we evaluate our system on a surgical phantom as well as in-vivo porcine experiments. These resulted in, to the best of our knowledge, the first robot-assisted arterial catheterizations; a major step towards our eventual goal of automatic catheter insertion through the Seldinger technique.