Abstract: Flexible ureteroscopy is one of the most common procedures for treating upper-tract urolithiasis, and India performs over 3,00,000 stone procedures each year. Ureteroscopes are almost entirely imported into the country, and clinicians are caught in a difficult trade-off between reusable and single-use scopes. Reusable flexible ureteroscopes carry a real clinical risk: their long, narrow working channels are hard to clean and disinfect reliably, and reprocessing failures have been linked to cross-contamination and post-procedure urinary tract infection. Single-use scopes remove that risk, but the imported disposables available today remain prohibitively expensive, putting them out of reach for most centres. This talk presents the design, development, and bench validation of an indigenous, cost-efficient, single-use flexible ureteroscopy system, engineered to eliminate the reprocessing risk of reusable scopes while driving the cost of a disposable low enough to widen adoption, reduce the burden of per-procedure cost, and improve patient safety.

The system is organised around a cost-driven split between a reusable scope handle and a single-use tip. The handle holds all the active electronics, while the tip carries only a 400 × 400 pixel CMOS image sensor with its illumination, protection, and identification circuitry, mating through a pogo-pin interface. This confines the recurring cost to a disposable tip, bringing the per-procedure cost to half of imported single-use scopes, while the durable, expensive hardware remains in the handle and the Video Processor (VP). The full system comprises four custom PCBs with their embedded firmware; the mechanical enclosures, the insertion tube, the image sensor, and the illumination source were designed by an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) partner.

Signal from the tip is digitised and serialised in the handle, carried down the scope cable, taken across a reinforced galvanic isolation barrier, and delivered to the VP. The VP renders the 400 × 400 camera image within a 1080p user interface and drives six synchronised display outputs at 60 fps. The platform was verified from board bring-up through to end-to-end operation, with patient leakage current held within the Type BF limit (below 100 µA under normal conditions) and conducted emissions below Class B levels. Image quality was assessed qualitatively against a commercial reference endoscope using standard resolution and colour targets, and the imaging path was verified to carry the camera stream across the serial link without degradation. The completed design has been transferred to the OEM partner for manufacturing, certification, and the pre-clinical and clinical evaluation.

As a possible future enhancement on the same platform, a separate prototyping effort examined conductor-free power delivery to the scope. An optical wireless power transfer (OWPT) link, carrying power across a short air gap from an LED array to a photovoltaic cell, was characterised on a bench-top system and was used to power a live camera and its illumination, a first step towards a conductor-free isolation barrier enabling better patient safety.

Event Details
Title: Design and Development of a Single-Use Flexible Ureteroscopy System
Date: July 31, 2026 at 02:00 PM
Venue: Google Meet (meet.google.com/phh-ekjo-nbf)
Speaker: Mr. Navin Rajaiah Subbu (EE23S030)
Guide: Dr. Mohanasankar S
Type: MS seminar

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