Robotic guidewire to clear brain clots

“Engineers at MIT have now developed a steerable guidewire that responds to a magnetic field through much of its length, and is narrow, slick, and flexible enough to work inside the brain. Made from a nitinol core, a shape-memory alloy, it has a rubbery coating seeded with magnetic particles. The outside of the device is a thin hydrogel film that gives the guidewire a smoothness that makes it glide through blood vessels. The guidewire can be pushed at the proximal end, while a hand-held magnet can help to steer it at the distal end near the tip. To prove that the device can indeed move through challenging anatomy, a one-to-one model of a real patient’s brain vasculature, obtained from CT scans, was created. The vessels were filled with a fluid with the viscosity of blood and the guidewire was used to successfully navigate through these vessels. Additionally, the team replaced the nitinol core of the guidewire with an optical fiber and demonstrated that light, including laser light, can also be delivered the same way to a potential treatment site.”      MORE WITH VIDEO

Image Credit: MIT and MedGadget.com