The Design and Experimental Application of an Esophageal Stent Migration and Fatigue Testing Device

A stent fatigue and migration testing device was designed based on the mathematical analysis of fatigue mechanism of an esophageal stent and esophageal motility, in which the esophageal stent was assumed to be under simulated in vivo peristaltic movement. A system simulating an esophageal tube movement was developed using Arduino MEGA and LabVIEW LIFO interface. The precise detection of the esophageal stent migration model was done by combining camera image processing analysis and Flexible Pressure Sensor (FPS). An Arduino MEGA2560 was used as the control board for the real-time monitoring of non-vascular esophageal stents while a LabVIEW based software was designed to monitor in real time the FPS and Flexible Bend Sensor (FBS) as well as the inmge processing for the stent fatigue/migration testing. Experimental results verified that the system can test for a stent's fatigue life and the corresponding recorded data can be used for optimizing esophagus design. The proposed system can be further upgraded to be able to evaluate other types of stents for non-vascular applications as well as stents that is made from experimental materials.