Camera sheath with transformable head for minimally invasive surgical instruments

Abstract

Introduction

This paper presents a camera sheath that can be assembled to various minimally invasive surgical instruments and provide the localized view of the instrument tip.

Material and methods

The advanced transformable head structure (ATHS) that overcomes the trade-off between the camera resolution and the instrument size is designed for the sheath. Design solutions to maintain the alignment between the camera’s line of sight and the instrument tip direction during the transformation of the ATHS are derived and applied to the prototype of the sheath.

Results

The design solution ensured proper alignment between the line of sight and the tip direction. The prototype was used with the curved micro-debrider blades in simulated functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS). Deep regions of the sinus that were not observable with the conventional endoscopes was accessed and observed using the prototype.

Conclusions

The presented camera sheath allows the delivery of the instrument and camera to the surgical site with minimal increase in port size. It may be applied to various surgeries to reduce invasiveness and provide additional visual information to the surgeons.

Keywords:

• Minimally invasive surgery
• transformable head structure
• endoscopic sinus surgery
• surgical instrument
• mechanical design

Disclosure statement

• Seongil Kwon, Chunwoo Kim and Hanyong Chun has a patent for the camera sheath presented in the manuscript, which is licensed to Medicaretec Co. Ltd., Seoul, Korea.

• Chunwoo Kim and Hanyong Chun owns stock in Medicaretec Co. Ltd.

• Hanyong Chun works for Medicaretec Co. Ltd.

• No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data available statement

The data presented in this study are available on reasonable request from the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Internal Research Grant 2V09228 funded by Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST, Korea).