Posted on 11/30/2006 11:32:50 AM PST by Dark Skies
A researcher at John Hopkins claims to have developed haptic technology, which they say will allow doctors to ‘feel’ the work of a mechanical helper.
Allison Okamura, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, and a leading researcher in human-machine interaction, has said that by adding the sensation of touch, surgeons will be able to feel what the robotic fingers probes in the body, thereby allowing greater precision in surgical procedures.
"Surgeons have asked for this kind of feedback. So we're using our understanding of haptic technology to try to give surgeons back the sense of touch that they lose when they use robotic medical tools,” said Prof. Okamura.
"The sense of touch is important to surgeons. They like to feel what's happening when they're working inside the body. They feel a 'pop' when a needle pokes through tissue. They can feel for calcification. Their sense of touch helps tell them where they are within the body. In robotic procedures and other types of minimally invasive surgery, surgeons insert long tools between their hands and the patient. This approach has definite medical benefits, but for the surgeon, there's a loss of dexterity and haptic information. It's like operating with chopsticks that have grippers on the end," she said.
For her study, Prof. Okamura has collaborated with the Intuitive Surgical Inc., maker of the da Vinci robotic system used in many hospitals for heart and prostate operations, in which a surgeon sits at a computer console, looks through a three-dimensional video display of the surgery site and moves finger controls that direct the motion of robotic tools inside the patient.
However, this system currently does not send haptic feedback to the surgeon to convey what the mechanical tool "feels" inside the body. Her team is now conducting research to add these sensations to the da Vinci and other similar machines.
For example, the da Vinci's tools can be directed to tie sutures, but if the operator causes the tools to pull too hard, the thread can break. Prof. Okamura is now aiming her study at finding out how the human operator will be able to feel resistance when too much force is applied.
As an interim system, her team has now developed a system that sends "haptic" information to the eyes.
“When a surgeon is using a robotic tool to tie a suture, for example, a colored circle follows the image of the tool in the visual display, indicating how much force is being using. A red light may signal that too much force is being applied, and the thread is likely to break. Green and yellow lights may indicate that the right amount of force is being used or that the tool is edging toward excessive force,” she said.
“Computer models could be less expensive but might not respond quickly enough. I'm exploring both approaches to see which produces the best results. The most important thing is that the haptic feedback sent to the human operator must feel right because the fingers aren't easily fooled," she added.
There are some big developments in the medical pipeline.
"Robot surgeons set to get touchy-feely (surgeons feel what robots probe)"
When robots need surgery...
Interesting!
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