Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects (NSERC partnered)

Catheters are widely employed in vascular and cardiovascular disease (CVD) treatment. CVD is the leading cause of death in adult Canadian men and women. In Canada, 70,000 patients die out of 500,000 hospitalized CVD cases per year. Catheters are not only important in these life-saving surgical procedures but are also inserted into body cavities or vessels for drainage purposes, to administer fluids or allow passage of other instruments for surgery on different parts of the body. Most catheters are straight. A variety of catheter shapes may be necessary to negotiate an area of the body that would not allow passage of a simple straight catheter in vascular surgery. The principal innovation of this project is to create a novel catheter technology whereby a catheter's tip can be reversibly deformed into controllable angles using a novel shape memory mechanism in combination with wireless MEMS technology. The control of the catheter tip bending angles or deformation allows the catheter to guide itself through tortuous paths in human blood vessels with minimum physical forces to be applied by the surgeon. Successful realization of this technology will not only improve upon the current state-of-the art but also will lead to a change in clinical practice whereby a single catheter tip can be used to navigate through complex blood vessel geometries over a range of angles. This research will lead to innovative medical devices in vascular surgery, improved surgical procedures, and potentially enhanced surgical outcomes for patients. Drawing expertise from chemists, engineers, and surgeons, this the smart catheter technology developed for vascular surgery in this project will serve as an ideal launching platform for applications in other surgical procedures in future.