A Fully 3D-Printed Steerable Instrument for Minimally Invasive Surgery

In the field of medical instruments, additive manufacturing allows for a drastic reduction in the number of components while improving the functionalities of the final design. In addition, modifications for users’ needs or specific procedures become possible by enabling the production of single customized items. In this work, we present the...

Design of a novel miniature breast biopsy needle for ductoscopy

Background. The majority of the benign and malignant lesions in the breast arise from the ductal epithelium and terminal ductlobular unit. A minimally invasive procedure called ductoscopy is able to visualize these lesions as it inspects the ductal epithelium using a small micro-endoscope. Unfortunately, it is currently challenging to obtain...

Design of a novel three- dimensional-printed two degrees-of-freedom steerable electrosurgical grasper for minimally invasive surgery

In current bipolar electrosurgical instruments, a high frequency electrical sinusoidal wave is passed through the patient's body from an active electrode to the return electrode to cut, coagulate, or desiccate tissues. Even though current bipolar electrosurgical instruments have proven effective in minimizing blood loss, advancement is needed...