Intro:

Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI), commonly known as coronary angioplasty or simply angioplasty, is a minimally invasive procedure used to treat narrowed or blocked coronary arteries, typically caused by coronary artery disease. During PCI, a thin, flexible tube called a catheter is inserted into a blood vessel, usually in the groin or wrist, and threaded through to the blocked artery in the heart. Once in place, a small balloon at the tip of the catheter is inflated to widen the narrowed artery, restoring blood flow to the heart. In some cases, a stent—a small mesh tube—is also placed to help keep the artery open. The current problem present in this intervention is its risk to the surgeons and nurses that are preforming the intervention. Due to there being a constant x-ray of the patient in order to guide the catheter; this prolonged x-ray exposure increases the risk of cancer for the doctors and the nurses. A solution that allows the doctors to limit the time that they are exposed to the x-ray is urgently needed

Skills I learned/developed:

✅ JavaScript

✅ HTML

✅ Three.js

✅ Arduino

✅ Physical Circuit construction

✅ Working under time pressure

Process:

• Hackathon was based in University of Toronto, we had to create a solution that is related to the heart. We had only 32 hours to find a problem, then create the solution for that problem
• Knowing that we had limited time, we did a very quick search and discovered an intervention called PCI, upon further reading of that intervention we discovered the problems it had and started thinking of a solution

How the PCI procedure looks like

• We discovered that due to the constant X-ray used during the procedure, doctors were at risk of developing cancer, we then asked ourselves what if there was a way using robots to allow the doctors to preform these procedures without constant exposure to X-ray?

Our solution: Robot assisted Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

• Using robots, we can allow the doctors to guide the catheter wire using the robot allowing the doctor to not be exposed to the X-ray, using a robot could also reduce the risk of errors and allow for easier guiding of the wire reducing doctor fatigue.
• Now with the idea all figured out, it was time to get to work; we decided to create a virtual simulation of PCI using three.js and decided to create a prototype of the robot that can be used.
• Even though I did help out with the virtual simulation, I focused more on building the physical model, this was somewhat of a painful process since our team was given an Arduino kit and half of the things in that kit were things I have never worked with before.

How our Circuit was looking like

• However, after a long day and a dangerously low amount of sleep, we were able to finish everything on time! Now all that was left was to present to the judges coming from Boston Scientific

me and my team before our presentation :)

• After the presentation, we had to anxiously wait and see how well we did, and to our surprise we got first!

my team and the dean of engineering

me presenting what our idea was about