Minimally-Invasive Eye-Surgery on the Horizon as Magnetically-Guided Microbots Move Toward Clinical Trials
26th June 2013
Unlike larger robots, microrobots for applications in the body are too small to carry batteries and motors. To address this challenge, we power and control robots made of magnetic materials using external magnetic fields. Developed at ETH Zurich’s Multi-Scale Robotics Lab (MSRL), the OctoMag is a magnetic manipulation system that uses electromagnetic coils to wirelessly guide microrobots for ophthalmic surgery. The OctoMag is capable of generating magnetic forces and torques in three dimensions, and is physically restricted to a single hemisphere to allow easy access for patients and physicians. Using an early OctoMag prototype, ex-vivo experiments were performed in pig eyes to study the navigation tasks required for retinal surgery. Following these experiments, a next-generation system was built to accomodate a small animal head, allowing for in-vivo trials. With this system, mobility experiments were conducted in which a microrobot with a diameter of 285 µm (about four times the width of a hair) was navigated reliably through the eye of a rabbit, demonstrating the feasibility of using this technology in surgical applications.