Robotic cardiac compression device using artificial muscle filaments for the treatment of heart failure

Abstract

Heart failure occurs when the heart cannot pump adequate blood to the body, which afflicts over 60 million people worldwide. Its treatment options include physiotherapy, medication, mechanical heart support, heart surgery, or heart transplantation. Ventricular assist devices have direct blood contact while passive ventricular constraint devices have only modest therapeutic efficacy. Current direct cardiac compression devices are either bulky, require noisy driving pneumatic sources, or are unable to mimic the natural heart motion. This study introduces a robotic cardiac compression device made of soft artificial muscle filaments that can simultaneously produce radial, axial, and torsional movements, potentially augmenting the pumping function of a failing heart. An empirical model is developed to describe the device motion and an artificial pericardium is employed to enable uniform force distribution to the heart and real-time pressure sensing. The proposed device could deliver a stroke volume of 70 mL at 15 beats per minute, or a cardiac output of 1.05 L min⁻¹, and achieve a peak instantaneous flow rate of 2.8 L min⁻¹ and an output pressure of 50 mmHg. The new devices are highly customizable and experimentally validated with fresh porcine heart. They are expected to inspire future development of nonblood-contacting cardiac assist devices.