title: Multi-sensory force/deformation cues for stiffness characterization in soft-tissue palpation.
abstract: In the commercially available robot-assisted surgical systems, camera vision constitutes the only flow of data from the patient side to the surgeon side. This paper studies how various modalities for feedback of interaction between a surgical tool and soft tissue can improve the efficiency of a typical surgical task. Utilizing a haptics-enabled master-slave test-bed for minimally invasive surgery, user performance during a telemanipulated soft tissue stiffness discrimination task is compared under visual, haptic, graphical, and graphical plus haptic feedback modes in terms of task success rate and completion time and the amount of energy transfer and consequently trauma to tissue. While no significant difference is found in terms of the task completion times, graphical cueing and visual cueing are found to lead to the highest success rate and the highest risk of tissue damage (proportional to energy), respectively.
authors.affiliation: Canadian Surgical Technologies & Advanced Robotics, London Health Sciences Centre, London, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tavakoli
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Aziminejad
authors.forename: R V
authors.initials: RV
authors.lastname: Patel
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Moallem
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003238:Connective Tissue / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D004548:Elasticity; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D010173:Palpation / Q000379:methods*; D012677:Sensation / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014584:User-Computer Interface