The research team of Associate Professor Yujiro Takai of Toho University (Department of Respiratory Medicine, Medical Center Omori Hospital) and Associate Professor Hideyuki Tsukagoshi of Tokyo Institute of Technology (System Control System, Faculty of Engineering) applied fluid pressure to a single ultrafine tube. , Developed a mechanism (Mono-line Drive) to generate a peristaltic movement like a mizu.By using this mechanism, in the future, it aims to develop an auto-guided robot that can self-propell in the bronchi and automatically reach the target lesion in the lung, and can collect and treat the lesion.
In respiratory diseases such as lung cancer, biopsy of intrapulmonary lesions is essential to improve the accuracy of diagnosis and treatment.Currently, a biopsy is performed by bronchoscopy, but since the bronchi branch into smaller branches toward the periphery, fine manual movement adjustment is required.Due to technical differences among doctors, it is difficult to reliably reach the lesion with biopsy forceps, and the diagnostic accuracy is not sufficient.
Therefore, in order to perform a sufficient examination with a bronchial endoscope, there has been a need for a mechanism that can reliably advance the biopsy forceps to the target in the lung even in the bronchus, which is extremely fine and has a wide variety of branches.
The newly developed Mono-line Drive is designed to generate traveling waves in multiple chambers by simply applying or depressurizing into one tube.This made it possible to peristaltic through a very fine structure such as a bronchus. The Mono-line Drive is also equipped with a bending function for selecting the propulsion direction and a bending propulsion function for adapting to changes in the pipeline diameter, and the effectiveness of these was confirmed using a bronchial model.
In the future, it aims to expand the branching accuracy that can be promoted, to collect information inside the bronchi by installing a camera, etc., to develop functions that can be used for biopsy and treatment, and to put the equipment into practical use.
