New discovery of thin catheter movement under acoustical field of focused transducer

This paper reports that the phenomenon that an acoustic force is generated on the thin catheter, whose diameter is less than 1 mm, in the direction perpendicular to acoustic radiation direction. We consider that it has a potential of catheter control to bend in arbitrary directions. In the phenomenon, the catheter is bent towards the focal point in the near acoustic field, whereas it is bent away from the focal point in the far acoustic field. Accordingly, by actively moving the direction of the sound source perpendicular to the direction of sound propagation, the displacement of the catheter depended on the initial position of the catheter including near and far from the focal point in the acoustic field. There is a possibility that the catheter can be introduced to move in the arbitrary directions through multiple bifurcations in blood vessel network.