A METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR IMPROVED SURGICAL NAVIGATION EMPLOYING ELECTRONIC IDENTIFICATION WITH AUTOMATICALLY ACTUATED FLEXIBLE MEDICAL DEVICES

摘要

A navigation system for minimally invasive surgery incorporating means of automatic electronic identification of automatically actuated flexible medical device characteristics, communication of such information to a navigation control system and its use in an automatic actuation system that is used to accurately control navigation of the flexible medical device within a patient's anatomy by the use of a physics-based model of flexible device response to automatically applied actuations in order to efficiently access specified regions targeted for therapy delivery.