N. Ayache, S. Ourselin, A. Maeder (Eds.): MICCAI 2007, Part I, LNCS 4791, pp. 144–152, 2007. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007 Medical and Technical Protocol for Automatic Navigation of a Wireless Device in the Carotid Artery of a Living Swine Using a Standard Clinical MRI System Sylvain Martel 1 , Jean-Baptiste Mathieu 1 , Ouajdi Felfoul 1 , Arnaud Chanu 1 , Eric Aboussouan 1 , Samer Tamaz 1 , Pierre Pouponneau 1 , L’Hocine Yahia 2 , Gilles Beaudoin 3 , Gilles Soulez 3 , and Martin Mankiewicz 1 1 NanoRobotics Laboratory, Department of Computer Engineering and Institute of Biomedical Engineering, École Polytechnique de Montréal (EPM), Campus de l’université de Montréal, P.O. Box 6079, Station Centre-ville, Montréal (Québec), Canada H3C 3A7 2 Laboratoire d’Innovation et d’Analyse de la Bioperformance (LIAB), École Polytechnique de Montréal, Montréal, (Québec), Canada 3 CHUM-Hôpital Notre-Dame Département de radiologie, Pavillon Lachapelle (CHUM) Bureau C-1077 1560 Sherbrooke est Montréal (Québec) Canada H2L 4M1 {Sylvain.Martel,Jean-Baptiste.Mathieu,Ouajdi.Felfoul, Arnaud.Chanu,Eric.Aboussouan,Samer.Tamaz,Pierre.Pouponneau, L’Hocine Yahia,Martin.Mankiewicz}@polymtl.ca, {Gilles.Beaudoin,Gilles.Soulez}@umontreal.ca Astract. A 1.5 mm magnetic sphere was navigated automatically inside the carotid artery of a living swine. The propulsion force, tracking and real-time capabilities of a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) system were integrated into a closed loop control platform. The sphere was released using an endovascular catheter approach. Specially developed software is responsible for the tracking, propulsion, event timing and closed loop position control in order to follow a 10 roundtrips preplanned trajectory on a distance of 5 cm inside the right carotid artery of the animal. Experimental protocol linking the technical aspects of this in vivo assay is presented. In the context of this demonstration, many challenges which provide insights about concrete issues of future nanomedical interventions and interventional platforms have been identified and addressed. Keywords: Magnetic resonance imaging, wireless, tracking, control, in vivo assay. 1 Introduction The possibility of controlling magnetic particles using external magnetic fields opens the way for many medical applications. This potential has been acknowledged for many years now as, back in 1965, aneurism embolization studies were based on micron sized iron powders spatially confined with magnetic tipped catheters [1]. Ever since, magnetic drug delivery carriers have evolved and are now composed of state of the art nanoparticles such as stealth magnetoliposomes or smart polymer based