A microrobot for endovascular aneurysm treatment steered and visualized with MPI

The steering of microrobots by using magnetic fields offers applications for minimally invasive surgery or forestablishing drug delivery scenarios. On the one hand, magnetic particle imaging (MPI) offers a tomographic, realtime visualization of the used magnetic microrobots. On the other hand, an MPI scanner can apply magnetic fields, which a microrobot can be steered with. Hence, MPI is of great interest for realizing the tracking and navigation of microrobots. Here, we show that a microrobot, which has been coated with superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) can be steered through a patient specific phantom of the middle cerebral artery into an aneurysm, where it should occlude the aneurysm and can be potentially used for a triggered drug release or a hyperthermia treatment. The acquired MPI images show that a tracking accuracy of 0.68mmis achieved.