Ion

Ion is Intuitive's second robotic platform and the quieter half of the company's business: instead of operating on a patient, it goes looking for cancer. The system drives an ultrathin catheter down the airways to biopsy lung nodules that a hand-held bronchoscope cannot safely reach. The catheter is 3.5 mm across with a 2.0 mm working channel, articulates 180 degrees in any direction and can be pushed around tight turns, which is what lets Ion reach all 18 segments of the lung. That matters clinically, because more than 70 percent of cancerous nodules sit in the lung periphery. What separates Ion from every other bronchoscopy platform is how it knows where it is. A fibre-optic shape sensor running the length of the catheter measures its entire shape hundreds of times per second, so the system tracks position, shape and orientation continuously rather than inferring them from an electromagnetic field. A removable vision probe with a 120-degree field of view provides live airway imaging during navigation; once the target is reached the probe is withdrawn and the Flexision needle is passed through the same channel. The catheter is then locked in place and held there by the robot, which is the point of the whole design - a stable platform is what makes a small-target biopsy repeatable. Planning is done beforehand from the patient's CT scan in PlanPoint software, which builds a 3D map of the airways and a navigation path. During the procedure the target position can be updated, including through integration with mobile cone-beam CT systems to confirm the tool is genuinely inside the lesion. Ion was introduced in 2019 as model IF1000. Intuitive reported more than 100,000 cumulative biopsies by September 2024 and more than 140,000 in the single year 2025, making it the fastest-growing product line in the company. It is a diagnostic and therapeutic navigation aid, not a diagnostic system in itself, and it is not approved for use in children.

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