referring to fig1 , a blood vessel 1 having a wall 2 contains undesired plaque 3 as well as blood 4 . a . atherectomy tool 5 is introduced using catheter tube 6 . the tool is driven by air motor 8 via flexible rotating cable 7 . no further details of the atherectomy system are given , as these are well known commercial systems such as the rotablator ™ system . an electrical contact 9 measures the electrical impedance between cable 7 and the return path which is ground ( the patient is electrically grounded ). the discriminator 10 measures the complex impedance to ground by measuring the in - phase current ( i ) and the quadrature , or 90 deg out of phase current ( q ). from these measurements the conductivity and permittivity of the tissue can be computed , based on the well known methods of electrical impedance measurements . a full explanation is given later . based on the measured value , the type of tissue is determined by computer 12 and the catheter is automatically steered by hydraulic actuator 13 ( via tubes 14 ) to remove the undesired plaque 3 . as it approaches the wall 2 , the electrical properties start changing allowing precise and gentle steering and removal up to the wall 2 but without actually touching the wall . this is possible as the measured properties are also a function of tissue thickness , so when the plaque becomes very thin the properties of the underlying layer are showing through . in order to determine the rotational orientation of burr 5 a sense wire 11 is used in conjunction of a conductive strip on burr 5 . referring now to fig2 , the rotary burr 5 has a standard diamond powder coating 15 and is rotated at high speed by cable 7 . it is made from electrically insulating material such as ceramic , with the exception of metallized strip 16 . alternatively , it can be made of metal and coated with a hard ceramic coating except for strip 16 . a sense wire 11 terminates with tip 21 very close to burr 5 . once per rotation strip 16 comes close to tip 21 . this point can be detected by measuring the electrical impedance between wire 11 and cable 7 . a sharp drop signifies this point , which is used as a rotational reference point . catheter 6 contains five channels on top of the central channel used by cable 7 . channel 18 is used for sense wire 11 . channels 17 are used to steer burr 5 in the desired direction by inflating sections of bellows 20 . referring now to fig3 , bellows 20 is divided into four separate sections 19 connected to channels 17 . pressurizing a section will cause it to elongate , bending bellows 20 in the opposite direction . fluid 22 is a saline solution or pure water . for lower electrical noise the outside of catheter 6 is metallized with a very thin coating 23 . a sub - micron thickness , deposited by sputtering or evaporation , is sufficient . such a thin coat does not affect flexibility . the discrimination of tissue types is shown in fig4 . to discriminate plaque from the wall of a blood vessel by electrical properties is relatively easy and well known in the medical literature , as plaque has a higher electrical impedance ( both lower conductivity and lower permittivity ). it is more difficult to differentiate the wall from the blood filling the vessel , as both have high conductivity and high permittivity . however , the permittivity of the wall falls much faster ( by about a factor of 1000 faster ) with frequency . this can be seen from the following table . while the cited values differ between studies , all studies show that permittivity of blood falls much slower than permittivity of the vessel wall as frequency increases . the impedance of the tissue to ground ( the patient is grounded ) is shown schematically as impedance 24 . a current is sent from oscillator 26 via resistor 25 , contact 7 , cable 7 and burr 5 to the tissue impedance 24 . the lower the impedance 24 the lower the voltage at contact 9 will be . both the in - phase component i and the quadrature component q is measured buy any one of the standard methods of ac impedance measurement . by the way of example , the i component is found by multiplying output f 1 of oscillator 26 with the voltage senses at contact 9 using an analog multiplier 30 . the q component is found by multiplying the same voltage with the output of f 1 shifted by 90 degrees by phase shifter 29 . the output of the multipliers are filtered by capacitors 31 and converted to digital by a / d converters 38 . this is the standard sine and cosine separation method for finding the conductivity and permittivity components of a complex impedance . for frequencies below a few mhz , the voltage at contact 9 can be digitized and the derivation of the conductivity and permittivity can be done completely via digital signal processing . in order to generate the rotational reference pulse , the point when the voltage of sense wire 11 drops each revolution has to be found . the actual voltage can vary over a wide range , depending on the surrounding tissue , but the dip is always when the conductive strip 16 ( see fig2 ) is nearest to tip 21 . by comparing the average voltage at wire 11 to the instantaneous voltage , the reference point is found independent of voltage . signal f 1 is fed to sense wire 11 via resistor 32 . the sine wave envelope is detected by diode 33 and capacitor 34 . the average is derived by resistor 35 and capacitor 36 . comparator 37 generates a positive output when the instantaneous value is below the average value . again , the reference pulse generation can also be digital if the signal on wire 11 is digitized from the start . since the rate of change of the permittivity with frequency is required , at least two frequencies have to be used , three would be even more accurate . these are generated by oscillators 26 , 27 and 28 . for each frequency the circuit shown has to be replicated . it is also possible to use a single variable frequency source and single detection circuit and multiplex the detection process . a typical discriminator output is shown in fig5 . graph 43 is the amplitude of the sinewave at sense wire 11 , used to generate the rotational reference . graph 39 shows the conductivity , derived from the i component ( the higher the conductivity the lower the i component will be ). graph 40 shows the permittivity , derived from the q component ( the higher the permittivity the lower the q component will be ). graph 41 shows the permittivity at a much lower frequency . the horizontal scale is in degrees relative to the reference pulse , which is created when tip 21 is nearest to conductive strip 16 . in this example tip 21 is drawn close to the vessel wall . using just the data at f 1 , it is difficult to tell the wall ( 0 - 90 degree range ) from blood ( above and below burr 5 , at 90 - 180 degree range and 270 - 360 degree range ). at the second frequency f 2 , the permittivity in the wall area increases much faster than in the blood area . the plaque is easy to spot as it has much lower conductance and permittivity . using the values of table 1 for frequencies of 1 khz and 10 mhz , the conductivity and permittivity of plaque ( fat + calcium + fibrous material ) are below 0 . 1 s / m and 50 , while blood is above 0 . 7 s / m at both frequencies and wall is above 0 . 58 at both frequencies . the permittivity of the wall is much higher than blood at 1 khz ( 100 , 000 vs . 4100 ) but falls much faster at 10 mhz , dropping a factor of 1000 for the wall but only a factor of 14 for blood . this example shows that by using just three factors : conductivity , permittivity and ratio of permittivity at 10 mhz to 1 khz the three tissues can be discriminated with a large margin . adding a third frequency f 3 increases the accuracy . note that the rotational speed of the burr 5 is about 1 - 3 khz . for oscillator frequencies below that , the results will have to be sampled and integrated over many rotations . this is not a problem , as the steering is done at a much lower bandwidth than the measuring . an alternative is use a frequency of about 100 khz as the lowest oscillator frequency . a second alternative , shown in fig7 , is to replace the rotary tissue sensing by four sense wires 11 instead of a single one , and have each one connect to a discriminator . each one of the wires corresponds to one actuator direction . the advantages are : 1 . a completely standard burr can be used , however sensing does not extend tip of burr . 2 . system can be used for applications not requiring rotary burrs . 3 . only low frequency processing is required , as processing can be done at the steering bandwidth instead of the rotation speed . steering bandwidth is below 100 hz . the catheter has four actuation channels 17 and four sense wires 11 terminating in four tips 21 . if a burr is used , tips can protrude to partially envelope burr . the computer 12 in fig1 performs the discrimination between tissues based on the rules shown above and steers the burr 5 into the undesired tissue , in this case plaque . clearly the decision rules and parameters will change with the application and the tissue used . a large data base of impedance data for a large number of tissues is posted on the italian national research council website at : http :// niremf . ifac . cnr . it / cgi - bin / tissprop / htmlclie / uniquery there are similar data bases available on the internet for properties of malignant tumors versus healthy tissue . the hydraulic actuators 13 are shown in fig6 in conjunction with fig1 . a motor , such as a stepper motor , 48 is driven from computer 12 via a standard interface . a piston 45 is moved in a cylinder 44 via the action of a thread 46 and a mating female thread 47 . the pressure is transmitted via hypodermic tubing 14 to channel 17 ( not shown ) in catheter 6 . four identical units are used for + x , − x , + y and − y . by the way of example , burr 5 is a standard burr with an external diameter of between 1 . 5 to 2 . 5 mm . because the system is automated a single small burr can be used for all blood vessel sizes , as the computer will steer the bar in all radial directions to clean a large vessel . catheter 6 is slightly smaller than burr 5 . diameter of piston 45 is 1 - 2 mm and stroke is about 10 mm . piston 45 and cylinder 44 are made of very hard material , such as alumina , ruby or tungsten carbide , with a lapped fit . the pressure of the fluid is fairly high , typically 50 - 100 kg / cm2 . typical component values for the discriminator 10 are : frequencies in the 1 khz to 1 ghz range , time constants of filter 31 of about 10 - 100 us , time constant of capacitor 34 of 10 - 100 us , time constant of capacitor 36 and resistor 35 of 10 - 100 ms . an alternate way of steering is by using push - wires in channels instead of a liquid . the actuators and catheter are very similar to the ones discussed earlier . still another way of steering is use catheter tips made of ferromagnetic material and have a controlled external magnetic field . a variation is a system having a fixed external field and a catheter tip carrying three orthogonal coils to generate a force in any desired direction . this is available as a commercial system under the trademark niobe . it is sold by the stereotaxis corporation ( vwww . stereotaxis . com ). while the preferred embodiment relates to atherectomy and used electrical impedance sensing other applications and other sensing methods are part of this invention . by the way of example , different tissues can be discriminated by their mechanical properties such as stiffness , hardness and damping . this can be sensed by a vibrating tip . tissues can also be discriminated by thermal properties . a tip similar to fig7 can carry four temperature dependent resistors instead of sensing tips 21 . a constant current is passed through resistors and their temperature is measured by the voltage drop across them . different tissues have different heat conductivities : plaque will conduct less than blood vessel wall while blood will conduct heat rapidly , as convection exists . also , the word “ automatically ” in this disclosure and claims should be broadly interpreted , from a simple assist to the surgeon in operating surgical systems to fully unattended operation of such a system . in the minimal version the surgeon fully controls the system ; the tissue discriminator just assists the surgeon in the decision and operation of the atherectomy or other system . in a fully unattended operation the catheter can also be automatically advanced into the body and can be programmed to enter the correct blood vessel when coming to a junction point where there are multiple choices of routes . in the same manner , the “ tool ” or “ catheter tip ” should be broadly interpreted to include both contact tools ( burrs , rotary wires , blades , suction , electro - surgery etc ) as well as non contact tools ( lasers , water - jet , gas jet etc ).
an automatic atherectomy system uses the rotary burr at the tip of a catheter as a sensing device , in order to measure both the electrical conductivity and permittivity of the surrounding tissue at multiple frequencies . from these parameters it is determined which tissue lies in the different directions around the tip . a servo system steers the catheter tip in the direction of the tissue to be removed . in non - atherectomy applications the rotary tip can be replaced with any desired tool and the system can be used to automatically steer the catheter to the desired position . the steering is done hydraulically , by pressurizing miniature bellows located near the catheter tip .