Evaluation of a compound eye type tactile endoscope

Minimally invasive surgical techniques for endoscope become widely used, for example, laparoscopic operation, NOTES (Natural Orifice Translumenal Endoscopic Surgery), robotic surgery and so on. There are so many demand and needs for endoscopic diagnosis. Especially, palpation is most important diagnosis on any surgery. However, conventional endoscopic system has no tactile sensibility. There are many studies about tactile sensor for medical application. These sensors can measure object at a point. It is necessary to sense in areas for palpation. To overcome this problem, we propose compound eye type tactile endoscope. The proposed system consists of TOMBO (Thin Observation Module by Bound Optics) and clear silicon rubber. Our proposed system can estimate hardness of target object by measuring deformation of a projected pattern on the silicon rubber. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the proposed system. At first, we introduce approximated models of the silicone and the object. We formulate the stiffness of object, the deformation of silicone, and the whole object. We investigate the accuracy of measured silicone’s lower surface for deformation of silicone by prototype system. Finally, we evaluate the calculated stiffness of the soft object.