ARTERY project

ARTERY: robots, artificial intelligence and augmented reality in the future of cardiovascular surgery Structural heart diseases (SHDs) will affect 20 million people over 65 in the European Union between now and 2040*, 2.5 million of them in Italy. One of the research projects studying SHDs is ARTERY (Autonomous Robotics for Transcatheter dEliveRy sYstems), which was launched officially in January last year. Politecnico di Milano is one of the organisations involved (as lead partner), with the collaboration of Fondazione Politecnico di Milano, Politecnico di Milano is combining its expertise with those of the Hospital San Raffaele of Milan, which provides the clinical guidance for the project, the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies of Pisa, the Catholic University of Leuven, which will produce the robotics for the catheters, and three companies that will work on the transfer of the research, i.e. FBGS. The research project is funded by the European Commission through the research and innovation programme Horizon 2020, within its initiative to drive the potential of robotics and their applications. The focus of the project is the non-invasive treatment of heart valve decease, and ARTERY’s objective is to create a revolutionary robotic platform enabled by artificial intelligence and augmented reality. The project will lead to the development of new navigation and control systems, and systems to train and support operators, making surgery safer and more effective for patients and removing the need for X-rays. As part of the ARTERY project, a robotic platform will be created that will simplify PCI procedures, and the use of X-rays will become redundant. The surgeon will interact with the robotic system through augmented reality, selecting the target point for the catheter, and visualising the model of the catheter and the patient’s vascular tree. The system is semi-autonomous and decisions guided by AI will always be shared and agreed with the human operator.