Design of an actuated phantom to mimic the motion of cardiac landmarks for the study of image-guided intracardiac interventions

In order to be accepted by the clinical and technical community, a new medical tool needs a long duration of testing and validation period. Whereas animal trials are the current standard for evaluating new technologies just before experimenting on human, they are costly in terms of both money and time. For the early stages of a novel technological tool or an approach, the use of a cost-effective and reusable dynamic model would be highly effective. In this study we demonstrate the viability of a novel and specific MR compatible, computer controlled, and actuated phantom that can mimic the left ventricle (LV) for image guided and robot assisted transapical intracardiac surgeries in the beating heart.