Systems and methods for responsive insertion and retraction of robotic endoscope

Inventors

Slawinski, Piotr Robert • Keshtgar, Maziyar • Pedram, Sahba Aghajani

Assignees

Noah Medical Corp

Abstract

A method is provided for controlling a tip velocity of an articulating flexible endoscope. The method comprises: generating a command to move a tip of an elongated member of the articulating flexible endoscope at an expected velocity; receiving sensor data acquired by a sensor disposed at a distal tip portion of the elongated member to calculate a tip velocity; calculate a disparity between the expected velocity and the tip velocity; and controlling the tip velocity based on the disparity.

Core Innovation

The disclosure relates to controlling a tip motion of an articulating flexible endoscope by driving an elongated member along an anatomical pathway via an instrument driving mechanism (IDM). Sensor data acquired by a position sensor disposed at a distal tip portion is received during operation, and when the distal tip portion is determined to be at a pre-selected location within the anatomical pathway, a motion of the distal tip portion is set to zero and the motion of the distal tip portion is calculated within a time window.

Within the same time window, a disparity is calculated between the motion of the distal tip portion projected in a heading direction and a motion of the IDM along an insertion direction. The disparity is compared against a dynamic threshold along the insertion direction, wherein the dynamic threshold is varied based at least in part on an insertion distance, and a buckling event is detected by comparing the disparity to the dynamic threshold.

The disclosure further supports determining tip motion within the time window using the distal tip portion velocity, including projecting motion in the heading direction and calculating disparity based on motion mismatch. It additionally describes processing concepts such as filtered time derivative and low-pass filtering for tip velocity, and it proposes resetting safety metrics at a pre-selected anatomical location using sliding time windows. A user interface is used to trigger GUI warning messages and recommended actions in response to buckling detection.

Claims Coverage

The document provides two independent claims, a method claim and a system claim, that share the same core inventive structure: driving an articulating flexible endoscope along an anatomical pathway, using distal-tip position-sensor data to compute a time-windowed disparity between projected distal-tip motion and IDM motion, and detecting a buckling event by comparing the disparity to a dynamic threshold varied at least in part by insertion distance.

Across both independent claims, buckling is detected by computing a heading-direction projected disparity between time-windowed distal-tip motion and insertion-direction IDM motion, and comparing that disparity to a dynamic threshold that varies with insertion distance, with distal-tip motion zeroed at a pre-selected location in the anatomical pathway.

Stated Advantages

Documented Applications