This Thread-like Robot Can Move Through Blood Vessels In Your Brain

Engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have generated a thread-sized robot that can move along blood vessels in the brain and provide drugs that work to reduce blood clots for strokes or aneurysm treatments. This is a new invention that replaces the traditional open brain surgery and completely facilitates external surgeries. Accordingly, surgeons can monitor and control the robot from another location without necessarily being in the operating room.

Researchers have described the robot in a published on Science Robotics as a "magnetically steerable, hydrogel-coated robotic thread". Nickel-titanium alloys with bending and springy features have been used to make the thread cores. In addition, the core is also covered with a layer of rubber or ink dipped with magnetic particles, then a layer of the hydrogel, which makes the wire travel smoothly and reduce friction. The final product will be controlled via magnet.

Today, surgeons often clean blood clots in the brain by passing a thin thread through the main artery. They use fluorescent lights to show blood vessels in X-rays, allowing them to rotate and guide the wires into damaged brain circuits. The surgeons also insert a catheter along the wire to give medicine or other blood clot treatments. These procedures mostly depend on the surgeons who have multiple exposures to repeated radiation from fluorescence. This, as a result, imposes the risk that the wires potentially damage the vessels.

On the contrary, surgeons can control robotic fibers with magnets outside the operating room. This helps to prevent surgeons from continuously being exposed to radiation, and enabling them to conduct remote procedures by utilizing a joystick. With the help of hydrogel, it is believed that the risk of friction with the lining will be reduced and the robotic thread can help surgeons access deeper into the brain.

Although the robotic wire has not yet been used in clinical treatment at present, the team flexibly utilizes the wire through a series of small rings that represent its obstacles, like threading a needle. They also made a replica with a similar size as the main blood vessels of the brain and guided the wire through the narrow and winding roads. In the end, the research team anticipates that the robotic thread can provide treatment for blood clot reduction or blockage break-ups through laser usage.