Portable Robot for Needle Insertion Assistance to Femoral Artery

Femoral artery access is a common and critical procedure for various cardiovascular interventions. Although it is a time critical operation, accessing the Common Femoral Artery (CFA) typically requires expertise found in specialized medical settings. The necessity for specialized personnel or transport to equipped facilities can lead to delays, potentially exacerbating patient outcomes. To address this challenge, a portable and cost-effective robotic device that autonomously localizes a CFA and precisely positions a needle guide is developed. Through the needle guide, needle can be quickly and accurately inserted into the artery even by non-specialist physicians. Different from the conventional B-mode ultrasound guided procedure, the proposed robotic solution utilizes a Doppler transducer for detecting the arterial location and employs a single M-mode transducer for depth measurement. A series of experiments are designed and conducted to validate the system’s feasibility, achieving high accuracy within 2 mm, rapid processing within 1.5 min, and a 100% success rate, thus proving the system’s efficacy. These results convince us for further refinement of the system and support its evaluation in animal studies.