Real-Time Haptic Feedback in Laparoscopic Tools for Use in Gastro-Intestinal Surgery

One of the limitations of current surgical robots used in surgery is the lack of haptic feedback. While current surgical robots improve surgeon dexterity, decrease tremor, and improve visualization, they lack the necessary fidelity to help a surgeon characterize tissue properties for improving diagnostic capabilities. Our work focuses on the development of tools and software that will allow haptic feedback to be integrated in a robot-assisted gastrointestinal surgical procedure. In this paper, we have developed several tissue samples in our laboratory with varying hardness to replicate real-tissues palpated by a surgeon in gastrointestinal procedures. Using this tissue, we have developed a novel setup whereby the tactile feedback from the laparoscopic tool is displayed on the PHANToM haptic interface device in real-time. This is used for tissue characterization and classification. Several experiments were performed with different users and they were asked to identify the tissues. The results demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.

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