Micro device with force sensing for manipulate system of palpation

ICT (information and communication technology) has increasingly been utilised in the medical and bio-engineering field. Most of medical records have been digitalised, and various information in medical procedures have been created as digital data. In microscopic surgery and bio-engineering, much operation demands digitalized data on operations for the introduction of robots. However, no method has been established in medical care to enable making data on living tissues for mechanical actions. Therefore, we developed a new sensing system that uses a hydraulic-driven micro device to measure a mechanical characteristic of bio tissues. This system can measure small forces acting on the tips of the end-effector as the internal pressure changes. Trained doctors can distinguish the state of the organ during an operation through touch. This is the palpations that a medical doctor performs. For robotic surgical systems such as da-Vinci, the capability of distinguishing the state of the organ through touch will enable such system to palpate in the future. It is necessary to explore the relationship between mechanical characteristic changes and pathological changes for this realization. The hydraulic-driven micro device handles an object and measures the reaction force and its displacement. This report describes the evaluation of measurement results using developed micro handling device which became high precision. The micro handling device to measure mechanical characteristic of bio tissues was actuated by the micro bellows. The bellows were made with very thin metal by electroforming. Because an improved bellows has low stiffness and it can expand and contract linearly, the bellows expand by small force and it has high sensitivity for the pressure changes. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 19K04308.