{"id":43068,"date":"2025-12-09T13:19:45","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T18:19:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/?p=43068"},"modified":"2025-12-09T18:48:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T23:48:47","slug":"how-a-low-cost-soft-robot-is-learning-to-perform-surgery-inside-a-beating-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/how-a-low-cost-soft-robot-is-learning-to-perform-surgery-inside-a-beating-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Low-Cost Soft Robot Is Learning to Perform Surgery Inside a Beating Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a leap for minimally invasive medicine, a soft robot is learning to perform delicate procedures inside a living, beating heart\u2014something no human hand could ever achieve.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"For Assistant Professor Tommaso Ranzani (ME, MSE, BME), who leads this project, it\u2019s the culmination of years of design and experimentation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

His team\u2019s latest breakthrough marks one of the first demonstrations of a soft robot operating safely and effectively within a beating heart. The implications stretch far beyond a single research paper. This innovative work could redefine cardiac surgery, making procedures faster, safer, and less invasive.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very unforgiving environment,\u201d Ranzani said. \u201cYou\u2019re not working on a benchtop model, you\u2019re in a living [porcine model], in the hands of a surgeon who is performing a procedure with it. It has to work.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That dependability was tested in a <\/span>paper published<\/span><\/a> in <\/span>Advanced Robotics Research<\/span><\/i>, in which Dr. Ranzani and his collaborators, including BU PhD student Leonardo Zamora Ya\u00f1ez, demonstrated a soft-robotic guidance system capable of performing intricate maneuvers within a beating heart.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Most traditional surgical robots, while offering enhanced stability, often restrict the high mobility and adaptability required for complex, minimally invasive procedures. Current advanced surgical robots, particularly those used for endovascular approaches that navigate the vascular system to minimize patient invasiveness, are typically designed to reach specific anatomical locations to deliver targeted therapy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ranzani\u2019s work, however, is particularly innovative because it pivots the design from this functional constraint to one of high mobility and dexterous manipulation. The device not only enables manipulation within the beating heart but also effectively transmits forces and maintains stable contact with moving anatomical structures. These transformative capabilities enable more complex and advanced procedures within the beating heart without compromising the procedure’s low invasiveness.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most surgical robots today are built for stability rather than motion. However, Ranzani\u2019s work is particularly innovative because it pivots the design paradigm of surgical robotics from traditional stability to high mobility and adaptability.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal is to perform procedures trans-catheter,\u201d Ya\u00f1ez said. \u201cAll done while the patient’s heart is still beating.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Ranzani\u2019s team turned to soft robotics\u2014robots built from compliant, flexible materials that can bend and stretch naturally in response to the body.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSoft robots are perfect for medical use,\u201d Ranzani explained. \u201cThey can move with the beating heart instead of fighting it. That means we don\u2019t need\u00a0 very complex control systems to synchronize with every pulse\u2014the materials themselves adapt.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The project began through the National Institutes of Health Trailblazer Award, a grant designed for unconventional, high-risk ideas. The first phase demonstrated that tasks, such as cannulation, that once took over an hour could be completed in less than ten minutes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The team\u2019s success led to a new NIH R01 grant exceeding $2 million that expands the scope of the work, in partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston Children\u2019s Hospital. The goal now is not only to improve existing cardiac procedures but also to enable new ones within cardiology.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe designed it to be intuitive for surgeons,\u201d Dr. Ranzani said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The robot\u2019s compliance\u2014its ability to flex and stretch with the heart\u2019s natural movement\u2014allows it to track the valve\u2019s motion even as the heart beats, maintaining contact and precision on a constantly moving target. It eliminates the need to compensate for the target area.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Surgeons can focus on deploying the anchors. The robot handles the precise tracking, making the procedure direct and reliable, as described in another <\/span>recent paper<\/span><\/a> by Ranzani and his team.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou just keep turning, and at a certain point, the anchor releases itself into the tissue.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Safety remains a central concern. To prevent tissue damage, the team has integrated real-time force sensing into the robot\u2019s soft structure, enabling it to consistently monitor and estimate contact pressures via internal measurements, serving as a built-in safeguard.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

At the same time, Dr. Ranzani and his students are focused on accessibility. Despite its sophistication, the robot\u2019s materials are inexpensive.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe robot itself costs well below $100,\u201d he said. \u201cThe most expensive part is a stabilizer made from nitinol, the same material used in stents, but it can be sterilized and reused. We want hospitals of all sizes, not just the biggest ones, to be able to use it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It will still take years for the system to reach human trials. The team must first scale its studies to larger animal populations, test the robot across different surgeons and operating conditions, and confirm its safety and efficacy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Ranzani estimates at least five to six years before the first use in humans.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“If a medical device is released in 15 years from idea to actual use, that’s fast,\u201d Ya\u00f1ez said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But the trajectory is clear.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

From the first fragile prototypes to a robot now operating inside a beating heart, the field of soft robotics in medical applications is moving from theory to practice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not just making surgeries faster,\u201d Dr. Ranzani says. \u201cWe\u2019re making surgeries possible that couldn\u2019t be done before.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Because the robot’s compliant, flexible materials allow it to move with the heart’s beating rather than fighting it, the robot has a key advantage over traditional instruments that struggle to maintain precision in such a dynamic, high-stakes environment. The soft robot enables intricate procedures that were previously too risky or technically challenging to attempt.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This soft robotic system does not exert control\u2014it cooperates, offering a small glimpse of a future in which medicine moves as naturally as the body itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Tommaso Ranzani<\/b> is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and the Division of Materials Science and Engineering at Boston University. His research focuses on soft and bioinspired robotics with applications ranging from underwater exploration to surgical and wearable devices. He is interested in expanding the capabilities of soft robots across multiple scales to develop novel reconfigurable soft-bodied robots capable of operating in environments inaccessible to traditional robots.<\/span><\/p>\n

Leonardo Zamora Ya\u00f1ez<\/b> is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research focuses on soft robotic systems for beating-heart procedures. He is interested in advancing the design, modeling, and control of soft robots for applications in minimally invasive surgery.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a leap for minimally invasive medicine, a soft robot is learning to perform delicate procedures inside a living, beating heart\u2014something no human hand could ever achieve.\u00a0 For Assistant Professor Tommaso Ranzani (ME, MSE, BME), who leads this project, it\u2019s the culmination of years of design and experimentation.\u00a0 His team\u2019s latest breakthrough marks one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21479,"featured_media":43069,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[204,201,76],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43068"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21479"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43071,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43068\/revisions\/43071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}