ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,256,902, issued on March 25, was assigned to INTUITIVE SURGICAL OPERATIONS INC. (Sunnyvale, Calif.).

"Apparatus and method for increasing heat dissipation capacity of a medical instrument" was invented by Anqi Fan (Mountain View, Calif.) and Tiejun Hu (Fremont, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method includes generating thermal energy at a distal end of an elongate member and transferring the thermal energy between the elongate member and a housing coupled to a proximal end of the elongate member by activating a heat pump device thermally coupled between the elongate member and the housing. The heat pump device is disposed at lea...