Development of a Medical Telediagnostic System with Tactile Haptic Interfaces

Abstract

This paper aims at developing a tele-robotic hand for breast cancer diagnostics with tactile sensing and haptic feedback. An anthropomorphic, robotic hand to perform a clinical breast exam was developed. A high resolution optical tactile sensor was integrated with the hand to obtain informa- tion regarding the characteristics of the tumor inside of the patients breast. This information can be fed back desirably to the physician via a newly developed electrotactile haptic device. Experimental results were obtained by testing these devices on an artificial breast model. The high resolution tactile images that clearly showed the surface shape of the tumors. Furthermore the features of the tactile images were transferred as electrotactile excitation to an operator. The results verify the performance of these new devices and thereby the technology's potential to provide a critical and major step towards the development of better and more reliable medical tele-diagnostic systems. I. INTRODUCTION Tele-operation is an approach of applying sensing and control capabilities and intelligence of humans to robots and assisting them to perform complex tasks in remote and special environments (1). Although medical applications of tele-operation have had rapid growth in the last few years (2), very few medical tele-diagnostic systems have been reported. This can be attributed partly due to each of the fact that high performance tactile sensors for robot hands, haptic/force perception models and display systems for physicians are still open problems in the application of tele-operational robotic systems (3). One of the many useful applications that we foresee in this field is a remote breast cancer diagnostic robot. Physical examination of the breast by palpation is one of the most effective ways of detecting breast cancer (14). Ultrasound has become an indispensable accompaniment to palpation and highly compliments it. Once an abnormality is detected by palpation, ultrasound is used to further establish the abnormality and sometimes, to classify it to be malignant or benign (15). In many situations Ultrasound can detect nonpalpable tumors (16). Both these methods are currently two separate tests. A technique, that will help obtain a physical feel and a live ultrasound image of the tumor simultaneously, is very appealing to physicians. We have designed a system where in a remote diagnosis of a breast is possible by means of a tele-robot (17) with a special, three fingered, anthropomorphic, end-effector. Since