X-Message-Number: 28990
From: "Ejay Hire" <>
Subject: 250 Micron Robot for Microsurgery
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 12:00:39 -0600

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/medtech/0,72448-0.html?tw=wn_technology
_1

An international team of scientists is developing what they say will be the
world's first microrobot -- as wide as two human hairs -- that can swim
through the arteries and digestive system.

The scientists are designing the 250-micron device to transmit images and
deliver microscopic payloads to parts of the body outside the reach of
existing catheter technology.

It will also perform minimally invasive microsurgeries, said James Friend of
the Micro/Nanophysics Research Laboratory at Australia's Monash University,
who leads the team. The researchers hope the device will reduce the risks
normally associated with delicate surgical procedures.

While others have tried and failed to create microrobots for arterial
travel, Friend believes his team will succeed because they are the first to
exploit piezoelectric materials -- crystals that create an electric charge
when mechanically stressed -- in their micromotor design.

"People have tried various techniques, including electromagnetic motors,"
Friend said. "But at this scale, electromagnetic motors become impractical
because the magnetic fields become so weak. No one has taken the trouble to
build piezoelectric motors at the same scales, for this kind of
application."

Funded by the Australian Research Council, Friend's team is tweaking larger
versions of the device, and expects to have a working prototype later this
year and a completed version by 2009.

The scientists say stroke, embolism and vascular-disease patients should be
the first to benefit from the new technology.

The tiny robot, small enough to pass through the heart and other organs,
will be inserted using a syringe. Guided by remote control, it will swim to
a site within the body to perform a series of tasks, then return to the
point of entry where it can be extracted, again by syringe.

For example, the microrobot might deliver a payload of expandable glue to
the site of a damaged cranial artery -- a procedure typically fraught with
risk because posterior human brain arteries lay behind a complicated set of
bends at the base of the skull beyond the reach of all but the most flexible
catheters. There's a high risk of puncturing one of these arteries, which
almost always results in the death of the patient.
<snip>

Ejay Hire

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