Magnetic screw robot drills through brain tissue and retraces its path in lab tests
Researchers from the UT and Radboudumc have steered a tiny screw-shaped robot through real brain tissue, controlled only by a magnet outside the body. The test used sheep brain tissue in the lab. The team built a model that predicts exactly when such a robot loses control, a step towards treating stroke and tumors deep in the brain without open surgery. The study is published in the journal…
Researchers from the University of Twente and Radboud University Medical Center have successfully guided a tiny screw-shaped robot through real sheep brain tissue using only an external magnet. The study, published in Advanced Science, aims to develop a non-invasive method for treating deep-seated brain lesions, blood clots, tumors, and vascular malformations without the need for open surgery.
The robot, which drills forward like a screw, is controlled by an external magnet that can spin at different frequencies. However, beyond a certain frequency, known as the step-out frequency, the robot loses control and either stalls or moves erratically. Researchers built a model using the Buckingham Pi theorem to predict when this tipping point occurs, taking into account the robot's size, magnetic strength, and the stiffness of the tissue.
The model was validated using gelatin and real sheep brain tissue, showing that the robot could drill at a rate of 0.2 millimeters per second and retract at 2.9 millimeters per second. The robot was also able to accurately navigate to specific targets inside a soft gel model of the brain, with an accuracy of less than a millimeter.
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