A haptic probe for soft tissue abnormality identification during minimally invasive surgery

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel haptic probe for the identification of tissue properties during minimally invasive surgery (MIS). The purpose of such a device is to compensate a surgeon for a portion of the loss of haptic and tactile feedback experienced during robotic-assisted MIS. A prototype for validating the concept in an ex-vivo setting was developed and used to characterize two different testing modalities - rolling tissue indentation and uniaxial tissue indentation. A MIS compatible design (capable of passing through 10mm hole) is also presented. The key feature of the wheeled device is the ability to measure the tool-tissue interaction force as well as the rolling indentation depth conc..