Applications of shape memory alloys in medical instruments.

Endosmart GmbH was founded in January 2002 and is a spin-off from the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. Endosmart focuses on the use of NiTi mostly outside the implant market. Therefore a lot of tools especially for instruments for minimally invasive surgery are being developed. Innovative hingeless graspers, baskets, flexible instruments and also parts of instruments, just to name a few of them. A new focus of our work is the excellent compatibility to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems, and this has led to the development of the first MRI compatible needles for use in a surgical robot. New in the field of NiTi is the porous foam and its compatibility to human cells and first results show new possibilities in growing artificial cells. In combination with the elasticity of the foam a new generation of e.g. medical bone implants could be possible. This paper describes several developments in the field of instruments of shape memory alloys (SMAs) made also at Endosmart.