A major challenge during autonomous navigation in endovascular interventions is the complexity of operating in a deformable but constrained workspace with an instrument. Simulation of deformations for it can provide a cost-effective training platform for path planning. Aim of this study is to develop a realistic, auto-adaptive, and visually plausible simulator to predict vessels’ global deformation induced by the robotic catheter's contact and cyclic heartbeat motion. Based on a Position-based Dynamics (PBD) approach for vessel modeling, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is employed for an auto-adaptive calibration of PBD deformation parameters and of the vessels movement due to a heartbeat. In-vitro experiments were conducted and compared with in-silico results. The end-user evaluation results were reported through quantitative performance metrics and a 5-Point Likert Scale questionnaire. Compared with literature, this simulator has an error of 0.23±0.13% for deformation and 0.30±0.85mm for the aortic root displacement. In-vitro experiments show an error of 1.35±1.38mm for deformation prediction. The end-user evaluation results show that novices are more accustomed to using joystick controllers, and cardiologists are more satisfied with the visual authenticity. The real-time and accurate performance of the simulator make this framework suitable for creating a dynamic environment for autonomous navigation of robotic catheters.

Cardiologists highlight the need for an intra-operative 3D visualization to assist interventions. The intra-operative 2D X-ray/Digital Subtraction Angiography (DSA) images in the standard clinical workflow limit cardiologists’ views significantly. Compared with image-to-image registration, model-to-image registration is an essential approach taking advantage of the reuse of pre-operative 3D models reconstructed from Computed Tomography Angiography (CTA) images. Traditional optimized-based registration methods suffer severely from high computational complexity. Moreover, the consequence of lacking ground truth for learning-based registration approaches should not be neglected. To overcome these challenges, we introduce a model-to-image registration framework via deep learning for image-guided endovascular catheterization. This work performs autonomous vessel segmentation from intra-operative fluoroscopy images via a deep residual U-net and a model-to-image matching via a convolutional neural network. For this study, image data were collected from 10 patients who performed Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) procedures. It was found that vessel segmentation of test data results in median values of Dice Similarity Coefficient, Precision, and Recall of (0.75, 0.58, 0.67) for femoral artery, and (0.71, 0.56, 0.74) for aortic root. The segmentation network behaves better than manual annotation, and it recognizes part of vessels that were not labeled manually. Image matching between the transformed moving image and the fixed image results in a median value of Recall of 0.90. The proposed approach achieves a good accuracy of vessel segmentation and a good recall value of model-to-image matching.