Minimally Invasive Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy: Finding a less invasive alternative to an existing procedure

Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) is a procedure that is used to determine the stage of disease of melanoma patients and determine further treatment. However, the morbidities accompanied with this procedure are not negligible (e.g., wound infection, lymphoedema and seroma). With the goal reduce the incidence of morbidities, this thesis...

Steerable Neuroendoscopic Biopsy Forceps: Expanding the reach

Objective: To develop a steerable neuroendoscopic instrument (SNI) based on user requirements found by several means of user research, and to evaluate this instrument on usability and safety. Only 5% of the potential intraventricular neuroendoscopy (INE) cases are currently treated with endoscopy. For the other 95%, an endoscopic approach is...

Magnetic based micro-indentation catheter for soft tissue characterization in minimally invasive surgery

During the last ten years, open heart surgery has increasingly been replaced by minimally invasive surgery (MIS), which has three main advantages. There is reduced blood loss, small scars to reduce infections, and a shorter recovery time. However, MIS still lacks full surgical capabilities such as tool dexterity, tool-tissue contact force...

Cleaning of hollow instruments

Since a few decades, the use of Minimally Invasive Surgical (MIS) instruments has increased very fast. Minimally Invasive Surgery usesmuch smaller incisions compared to the traditional open surgery. The procedure is less invasive than open surgery and there is minimal damage to biological tissues at the point of entrance of the instrument. This...

Design of an injection moldable steerable tip for a laparoscopic instrument

The field of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is calling for steerable mechanisms to increase the functionality and versatility of the contemporary instruments. Since reusable steerable instruments cannot pass the sterilization regulations, disposable instruments could solve the cleaning problem. In order to be cost-competitive, a cheap...

Development of a medical Bernoulli gripper

When performing minimally invasive interventions, surgeons use grippers to grip and manipulate tissue. These grippers generally rely on their toothed profile and require pinching of the tissue for sufficient grip, entailing a risk of tissue damage. An solution should be found for this risk of damage. An alternative could be to manipulate the...