Surgery – Sexual appliance – Retention means
Patent
1999-04-12
2000-05-16
Kamm, William E.
Surgery
Sexual appliance
Retention means
A67B 1738
Patent
active
060630221
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to cardiac diagnostic and therapeutic systems, and specifically to invasive medical probes that may be used to map the interior surfaces of the heart.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Position-responsive cardiac catheters are known in the art. Such catheters are generally inserted percutaneously and fed through one or more major blood vessels into a chamber of the heart. A position-sensing device in the catheter, typically near the catheter's distal end, gives rise to signals that are used to determine the position of the device (and hence of the catheter) relative to a frame of reference that is fixed either externally to the body or to the heart itself. The position-sensing device may be active or passive and may operate by generating or receiving electrical, magnetic or ultrasonic energy fields or other suitable forms of energy known in the art.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,391,199, which is incorporated herein by reference, describes a position-responsive catheter comprising a miniature sensor coil contained in the catheter's distal end. The coil generates electrical signals in response to externally-applied magnetic fields, which are produced by field-generator coils placed outside the patient's body. The electrical signals are analyzed to determine three-dimensional position coordinates of the coil.
PCT patent publication number WO96/05768, filed Jan. 24, 1995, which is assigned to the assignee of the present application and whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a position-responsive catheter comprising a plurality of miniature, preferably non-concentric sensor coils fixed in its distal end. As in the U.S. Pat. No. 5,391,199, electrical signals generated by these coils in response to an externally-applied magnetic field are analyzed so as to determine, in a preferred embodiment, six-dimensional position and orientation coordinates of the coils.
Multiple position-sensing devices may be placed in a known, mutually-fixed spatial relation at or adjacent to the distal end of a catheter, as described, for example, in PCT patent application no. PCT/IL97/00009, which is assigned to the assignee of the present application and whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference. This application describes a catheter having a substantially rigid structure at its distal end, to which one or more position sensors are fixed. The sensors are used to determine the position and orientation of the structure, preferably for use in mapping electrical activity in the heart. Although the structure itself is substantially rigid, the remainder of the catheter is generally flexible, and the position sensors do not provide coordinate information regarding any points on the catheter proximal to the structure.
PCT publication WO95/04938, which is also incorporated herein by reference, describes a miniature magnetic field sensor coil and method of remotely determining the coil's location. The sensor coil may be used to determine the spatial configuration or course of flexible endoscope within the body of a subject in one of two ways: (1) By passing the coil through an internal lumen of the endoscope, for example, the endoscope's biopsy tube, and externally tracking the coil's location while the endoscope is held stationary; or (2) By distributing a plurality of the coils, preferably about a dozen, along the length of the endoscope and determining all of the coils' locations. The position coordinates determined with respect to each location of the coil (when a single coil is used) or to all the coils (when the plurality of coils are used) are taken together to interpolatively reconstruct the spatial configuration of the endoscope within the intestines of the subject, for example, and thereby estimate the corresponding spatial configuration of the intestines.
The accuracy of this endoscope in estimating the spatial configuration of the intestines depends on having a relatively large number of position measurements and/or of coils. Passing the coil (or othe
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Biosense Inc.
Capezzuto Louis J.
Kamm William E.
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