Graphical Reproduction of Tactile Information of Embedded Lumps for MIS Applications

Promising results of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) in the last two decades have been the main incentive of numerous researches to conquer some of the drawbacks of this procedure. Restoring the missing tactile information, especially the tissue palpation, is a significant enhancement in MIS capabilities. Tissue palpation is particularly important and commonly used in locating the embedded lumps. The present study is inspired by this essential limitation in MIS procedure and is aimed at developing a system to reconstruct the lost palpation capability of surgeons in an effective way. Having collected necessary information on the size and location of the hidden features using MIS graspers equipped with tactile sensors, we can process the information and graphically represent them to the surgeon. Therefore, the proposed system allows the surgeons to observe the presence or absence, location and approximate size of hidden lumps simply by grasping the target organ with smart endoscopic grasper. It is shown that using one array of the sensing elements; the proposed system can extract lump information including size and longitudinal location. The experimental results on the prototyped MIS graspers represented by graphical images conform to those of the finite element models.