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New tactile sensing system for minimally invasive surgical tumour localization
M T Perri1, A L Trejos, M D Naish
1London Health Sciences Centre, Canadian Surgical Technologies and Advanced Robotics (CSTAR), London, Ontario, Canada.
Background:
Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) suffers from the inability to directly palpate organs for tumour localization. A tactile sensing system (TSS), consisting of a probe and a visualization interface, was developed to present an active pressure map of the contact surface to locate tumours during MIS.
Methods:
The TSS performance was compared to MIS graspers to locate occult 10 mm phantom tumours in ex vivo bovine liver and ex vivo porcine lung. Performance assessment included applied pressure, localization distance and accuracy.
Results:
The TSS realized a relative 71% reduction in maximum applied pressure and a 31% increase in detection accuracy in liver tissue (when compared to MIS graspers) and demonstrated no significant differences in performance when palpating lung tissue.
Conclusions:
The TSS may help surgeons to identify occult tumours during surgery by restoring some of the haptic information lost during MIS.
