A Force Measurement Evaluation Tool for Telerobotic Cutting Applications: Development of an Effective Characterization Platform

Sensorized instruments that accurately measure the interaction forces (between biological tissue and instrument end- effector) during surgical procedures offer surgeons a greater sense of immersion during minimally invasive robotic surgery. Although there is ongoing research into force measurement involving surgical graspers little corresponding effort has been carried out on the measurement of forces between scissor blades and tissue. This paper presents the design and development of a force measurement test apparatus, which will serve as a sensor characterization and evaluation platform. The primary aim of the experiments is to ascertain whether the system can differentiate between tissue samples with differing mechanical properties in a reliable, repeatable manner. Force-angular displacement curves highlight trends in the cutting process as well the forces generated along the blade during a cutting procedure. Future applications of the test equipment will involve the assessment of new direct force sensing technologies for telerobotic surgery.

[1]  A K Morimoto,et al.  Force sensor for laparoscopic Babcock. , 1997, Studies in health technology and informatics.

[2]  Jaydev P. Desai,et al.  Measuring grasping and cutting forces for reality-based haptic modeling , 2003, CARS.

[3]  Wiendelt Steenbergen,et al.  Poly(vinyl alcohol) gels for use as tissue phantoms in photoacoustic mammography. , 2003, Physics in medicine and biology.

[4]  P. Lucas,et al.  Ranking the fracture toughness of thin mammalian soft tissues using the scissors cutting test. , 1997, Journal of biomechanics.

[5]  S. Habib,et al.  Dissection techniques in laparoscopic surgery: a review. , 1996, Journal of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

[6]  Allison M. Okamura,et al.  On the display of haptic recordings for cutting biological tissues , 2002, Proceedings 10th Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems. HAPTICS 2002.

[7]  Allison M. Okamura,et al.  Methods for haptic feedback in teleoperated robot-assisted surgery , 2004 .

[8]  Tobias Ortmaier,et al.  Motion Compensation in Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgery , 2003 .

[9]  N. Zemiti,et al.  Mechatronic Design of a New Robot for Force Control in Minimally Invasive Surgery , 2007, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics.

[10]  Jaydev P. Desai,et al.  Modeling Soft-Tissue Deformation Prior to Cutting for Surgical Simulation: Finite Element Analysis and Study of Cutting Parameters , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[11]  S. Shankar Sastry,et al.  Applications of micromechatronics in minimally invasive surgery , 1998 .

[12]  A. Lanfranco,et al.  Robotic Surgery: A Current Perspective , 2004, Annals of surgery.

[13]  John Kenneth Salisbury,et al.  The Intuitive/sup TM/ telesurgery system: overview and application , 2000, Proceedings 2000 ICRA. Millennium Conference. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Symposia Proceedings (Cat. No.00CH37065).

[14]  G Hirzinger,et al.  Development of actuated and sensor integrated forceps for minimally invasive robotic surger , 2005, The international journal of medical robotics + computer assisted surgery : MRCAS.

[15]  Rajnikant V. Patel,et al.  Tool/tissue interaction feedback modalities in robot-assisted lump localization , 2006, 2006 International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

[16]  Bernhard Kübler,et al.  Development of actuated and sensor integrated forceps for minimally invasive robotic surgery , 2006 .

[17]  Jaydev P. Desai,et al.  On-site three dimensional force sensing capability in a laparoscopic grasper , 2004, Ind. Robot.

[18]  Brian W. Darvell,et al.  A portable fracture toughness tester for biological materials , 1996 .

[19]  Christopher R. Wagner,et al.  The role of force feedback in surgery: analysis of blunt dissection , 2002, Proceedings 10th Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems. HAPTICS 2002.

[20]  Jan Peirs,et al.  A micro optical force sensor for force feedback during minimally invasive robotic surgery , 2003 .

[21]  Allison M. Okamura,et al.  A fracture mechanics approach to haptic synthesis of tissue cutting with scissors , 2005, First Joint Eurohaptics Conference and Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems. World Haptics Conference.

[22]  Antonio Bicchi,et al.  A sensor-based minimally invasive surgery tool for detecting tissutal elastic properties(003) 5323219 , 1996, Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[23]  G. Honderd,et al.  Optical fibre force sensor for minimal-invasive-surgery grasping instruments , 1996, Proceedings of 18th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.