Design and control of a new active cardiac stabilizer

Off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) is probably an important milestone in the cardiac surgery history. This technique is currently made possible thanks to the use of mechanical stabilizers. Nevertheless, the available stabilizers are not fully satisfying. Indeed, they have been demonstrated to exhibit significant residual motion. In this paper we propose a novel piezo-actuated compliant stabilizer, whose architecture is compatible with a minimally invasive surgery context. This active stabilizer is controlled using high speed visual feedback in order to compensate in real time for the residual cardiac motion. In vivo experimental results using the developed prototype are given to demonstrate the efficiency of the adopted approach.