Abstract
Recently, a minimally invasive surgery which makes the best use of the catheter has been becoming more popular. In endovascular coil embolization for a cerebral aneurysm, the observation of the catheter's painting phenomenon is very important to execute the appropriate manipulation of the delivery wire and the catheter. In this study, the internal bend sensor which consists of at least two bending enhanced plastic optical fibers was developed in order to measure the curvature of the catheter tip. Consequently, the painting could be more sensitively detected in the neighborhood of the aneurysm. In this paper, the basic characteristics of the developed sensor system are described and its usefulness is confirmed from the comparison of the insertion force of delivery wire and the curvature of catheter tip in the experiment of coil embolization.
