The researchers controlled the probe from Zurich while the animal was located in Hong Kong.
The performance was made possible by secure, fast internet connection and a magnetic navigation system developed at ETH Zurich, featuring a magnetically operated endoscope.
The joystick endoscope has a delay of only 300 milliseconds, a 4-millimetre-thick-probe that responds to the signals from Zurich as it moves around the stomach of an anaesthetised pig in Hong Kong.
Surgeons from the Faculty of Medicine at The Chinese University of Hong Kong monitored the procedure who also inserted the magnetic endoscope through the pig's mouth into its stomach.
Alexandre Mesot, doctoral student at the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich and Professor Bradley Nelson where the researchers performing the procedure. Mesot guided a camera to examine the pigs stomach wall and took tissue samples with a tiny gripper arm.
The endoscope is controlled by a magnetic field generated by Navion, a surgical navigation system that ETH Professor Nelson and his team developed. “Not only can the endoscope be bent in any direction thanks to its magnetic head; it’s also smaller and easier to manoeuvre than conventional devices,” Mesot explains.
The magnetic endoscope is flexible, bending backwards 180 degrees inside the pigs stomach. The smaller endoscope can also be inserted into a humans nose rather than the conventionally used oesophagus. It can also potentially be used on children.
The technology could enable better surgical performance care in remote areas and in areas with no local expertise available.
“In the next step of our research, we hope to carry out a teleoperated endoscopy on a human stomach. There’s a lot of potential in this technology. Here I’m thinking of minimally invasive procedures in the gastrointestinal tract, such as cancer screening,” said Nelson.
