title: Evaluation of Sensor Configurations for Robotic Surgical Instruments.
abstract: Designing surgical instruments for robotic-assisted minimally-invasive surgery (RAMIS) is challenging due to constraints on the number and type of sensors imposed by considerations such as space or the need for sterilization. A new method for evaluating the usability of virtual teleoperated surgical instruments based on virtual sensors is presented. This method uses virtual prototyping of the surgical instrument with a dual physical interaction, which allows testing of different sensor configurations in a real environment. Moreover, the proposed approach has been applied to the evaluation of prototypes of a two-finger grasper for lump detection by remote pinching. In this example, the usability of a set of five different sensor configurations, with a different number of force sensors, is evaluated in terms of quantitative and qualitative measures in clinical experiments with 23 volunteers. As a result, the smallest number of force sensors needed in the surgical instrument that ensures the usability of the device can be determined. The details of the experimental setup are also included.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Ingeniería de Sistemas y Automática, Universidad de Málaga, Calle Dr. Ortiz Ramos, 29071 Málaga, Spain. jmgomez@uma.es.
authors.forename: Jesús M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Gómez-de-Gabriel
authors.affiliation: School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading, Whiteknights, RG6-6AY Reading, Berkshire, UK. w.s.harwin@reading.ac.uk.
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Harwin
mesh_terms: D015374:Biosensing Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D019060:Minimally Invasive Surgical Procedures; D012371:Robotics / Q000379:methods*; D013525:Surgical Instruments
keywords: force feedback; teleoperation; virtual sensors