Development of "Patient Robot"; Measurement System of Myocardial Behaviors for the Quantitative Evaluation of the Surgical Robot Technology

Aiming to contribute an improvement of medical robot technology, the authors have been developing a new evaluation method on cardiac function, which is based on surface measurement of the heart. This system will be able to evaluate a function of surgical robot in the future. As the preliminary study, an animal experiment was performed to examine various cardiac functions under normal pulsatile and arrhythmic conditions. The physical data such as electrocardiogram, blood flow and pressure were simultaneously obtained and compared with this approach. It was found that there was a difference in displacements and phases from control to arrhythmia. With the physical data, it was confirmed that strain change in regional area was coincident with a contraction of natural heart. Moreover, the fusion images allowed us to understand the superficial strain of regional areas differs among the various heart functions visually. In the near future, this method will be effective for the improvement of real surgery as well as the advancement of the surgical robot technology