A Minimally Invasive Robotic Tissue Palpation Device

Objective: Robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery remains limited by the absence of haptic feedback, which surgeons routinely rely on to assess tissue stiffness. This limitation hinders surgeons' ability to identify and treat abnormal tissues, such as tumors, during robotic surgery.

Methods: To address this challenge, we developed a robotic tissue palpation device capable of rapidly and non-invasively quantifying the stiffness of soft tissues, allowing surgeons to make objective and data-driven decisions during minimally invasive procedures. We evaluated the effectiveness of our device by measuring the stiffness of phantoms as well as lung, heart, liver, and skin tissues obtained from both rats and swine.

Results: Results demonstrated that our device can accurately determine tissue stiffness and identify tumor mimics. Specifically, in swine lung, we determined elastic modulus (E) values of 9.1 ± 2.3, 16.8 ± 1.8, and 26.0 ± 3.6 kPa under different internal pressure of the lungs (PIP) of 2, 25, and 45 cmHO, respectively. Using our device, we successfully located a 2-cm tumor mimic embedded at a depth of 5 mm in the lung subpleural region. Additionally, we measured E values of 33.0 ± 5.4, 19.2 ± 2.2, 33.5 ± 8.2, and 22.6 ± 6.0 kPa for swine heart, liver, abdominal skin, and muscle, respectively, which closely matched existing literature data.

Conclusion/significance: Results suggest that our robotic palpation device can be utilized during surgery, either as a stand-alone or additional tool integrated into existing robotic surgical systems, to enhance treatment outcomes by enabling accurate intraoperative identification of abnormal tissue.