Design and in vivo validation of a force-measuring manipulator for MIS providing synchronized video, motion and force data

Abstract

This paper describes a force-measuring manipulator for minimally invasive surgery. It employs an extracorporeal force measurement system combined with a passive trocar support to deal with the restrictions of a single insertion point in the body. The first contribution is the detailed description of the design and the involved kinematics of the device and the force measurement system, while the second contribution is an extensive performance evaluation including an in vivo animal experiment. During the latter, endoscopic video images were recorded simultaneously with motion and force information of the instrument tip. Breathing effects, contact with other instruments and nonlinear soft tissue stiffness could be detected by the system, indicating its potential as a MIS manipulator and as an in vivo tissue property measurement tool.

A Novel Device for Measuring Forces in Endoluminal Procedures

“…Miniature force/torque sensors using piezoresistive technology [30,31] or fibre-optic sensing technology [32][33][34] have been proposed. However, distal sensors may suffer from two major issues: i) the limited robustness and ii) the difficulty to avoid coupling between the sensor and the steering mechanism for the tool at the tip and/or the local degrees of freedom of the instrument tip [29].…”

“…Force measuring manipulators have been proposed for in-vivo characterization of the surgical environment, in order to evaluate the instrument motion [25] or the interaction forces with tissues [26][27][28][29].…”

Implementation of Tactile Sensing for Palpation in Robot-Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery: A Review

“…Therefore, it is beneficial to develop devices and algorithms, which could operate in real-time and provide stable measurements. Thus, a device should be able to adapt to the variable conditions of the environment [105], [106]. This includes the accounting on the force applied, soft tissue restitution dynamics versus time, the shape of an organ and many other factors.…”

Force control for tissue tensioning in precise robotic laser surgery

“…On the other hand, if a force sensor would be simply mounted between the robot's end-effector and the instrument, it would be difficult to distinguish interaction forces from friction forces that develop at the trocar. For this reason an extra-corporeal force measurement system presented earlier by Willaert et al [23] is adopted here. This solution facilitates further in-vivo testing.…”