Haptic Feedback Based on Image Registration for Tele-surgical Systems
Researchers: Rolf Johansson (area leader), Anders Robertsson, Magnus Annerstedt (Herlev University Hospital and Lund University), Ingemar Ihse (senior professor of surgery at Lund University) and Pål Johan From (Post-doc)
Start-date: 2011-09
End-date: 2013-09
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Objective:
Development of methods to compute realistic haptic feedback forces from the real-time visual information.
Description:
Tele-operated and minimally invasive surgical robot systems have received much attention recently for many advantages. The systems, however, still have rooms for improvement. Recent advances in medical image registration can be used to provide breakthroughs in some of the difficulties shared by the current versions of the tele-operated surgical systems. For example, it is well known that having sensors attached to the tip of the slave instruments of the surgical robot system due to various reasons. This makes it difficult to provide haptic sensational feedback to the hands of the surgeons operating the master device. This project will explore a method to provide realistic haptic sensations without attaching sensors to the tip of the slave instrument. Image analysis and registration techniques will be exploited to compute feedback forces from the real-time images of the interactions between tissues and instruments.
Methods:
- Development of methods for registration of deformable images and construction of 3D virtual organ models
3D models of patient's organs are segmented and built from the medical images obtained a priori such as CT, MRI, SPECT, etc. However, human organs and tissues are deformed during interaction between the organ and the surgical tools, movement of digestive duct, etc. Analysis and processing of the visual information is required to register the real human organ to the pre-built 3D organ model. - Real-time computation of the interaction force from the deformation of the soft tissue models
It is difficult to attach a force sensor at the tip of the surgical instrument due to the size of the sensor and the large electric current following through the instrument to cut tissues. A computational method will be developed to provide force information without using a force sensor. Interaction forces will be computed from topological changes of the soft tissues and physical properties of the organ.
References:
R. Johansson, M. Annerstedt, A. Robertsson, Stability of Haptic Obstacle Avoidance and Force Interaction, Proc. 2009 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS2009), October 11-15, 2009 St. Louis, USA, pp. 3238-3243
2013-09-16