Note (General)Traditional gastrointestinal endoscope becomes a promsing earlier‐stage diagnosis and treatment tool for intestinal diseases. However, it causes discomfort and pain to patients and some potential complications in the process of operation, which may include perforation, infection, bleeding, and so on. Wireless capsule endoscope potentially offers a feasible non‐invasive way to image the entire intestine and overcome the limitation of the traditional gastrointestinal endoscope. Current commercial capsule endoscopes move through the intestine via natural bowel peristalsis and organ muscular contractions. Without the position control, the wireless capsule endoscope cannot adjust the field of view as desired, reducing the inspection accuracy. Moreover, the space constraints of wireless capsule endoscopes restrict capsule robot function expanding, which limits the wireless capsule endoscopes' prospect to a large degree. Therefore, the development of capsule robots equipped with active locomotion or treatment functions has provided great potential for wireless capsule endoscopy medical applications. In this thesis, a novel concept of a multifunctional modular capsule robot system is presented. The multifunctional modular capsule robot system consists of the main and functional modules. The main module drives the functional modules and provides guidance and support for the functional modules while the functional modules perform the specific diagnosis or treatment function such as biopsy, microsurgery, or targeted drug delivery.
The power supply is one of the main issues for developing capsule robot technology since limited battery capacity. Using the external magnet field provides the energy to manipulate the capsule robot is a promising method for energy supply. The proposed multifunctional modular capsule robots were controlled by an electromagnetic actuation system with three‐axis Helmholtz coils. By changing the currents of the coils, the three‐axis Helmholtz coils can create the dynamic uniform magnetic field in three‐dimensional space. In addition, the capsule robot utilizing the outer spiral structure can perform propelling force under the rotation magnetic field to move in the pipe environments.
A multi‐drug delivery capsule robot with active locomotion, dual‐drug load, and selective drug release is developed. The capsule robot might be used to address the limitations in robot‐assisted drug delivery, greatly improving the efficiency of intestinal disease treatment. The capsule robot is composed of a locomotion unit and a drug delivery unit, and these units are controlled by two orthogonal rotating magnetic fields. The capsule robot enables active locomotion to target positions and selects to release two different drugs according to clinic requirements.
A multi‐module capsule robot and a novel docking‐separation method to realize effective docking and rapid separation for capsule robots have been presented. The multi‐module capsule robots consist of a main module and functional modules. The main module can dock with functional modules and be integrated into a docked robot. And the dock capsule robot can successfully work in some bent parts of the intestinal tract. Moreover, the multi‐module capsule robot can prevent accidental separation and has potential applications in the clinical practices of intestinal tracts.
Finally, the multifunctional modular capsule robot system was developed, and the performance of the system was evaluated. The proposed multifunctional modular capsule robot system can be controlled separately, achieve docking and separation with each other, and release multi drugs at various target positions. Ex vivo experiments were performed to evaluate the performance, and the experimental results demonstrated its good performance in locomotion, docking, separation, and multi‐drug release.
Collection (particular)国立国会図書館デジタルコレクション > デジタル化資料 > 博士論文
Date Accepted (W3CDTF)2022-06-05T18:01:14+09:00
Data Provider (Database)国立国会図書館 : 国立国会図書館デジタルコレクション